The Great Debate: Just How Big Is The Universe

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Our universe is a mystery that scientist has been trying to solve for more than 100 years. In the article “The Great Debate: Just How Big is the Universe” the author brings together background information and collected evidence from scientist since the 1920’s. From the article I have gathered the empirical, objective, and rational elements from this particular discovery. April 26, 1920 there was a “Great Debate” held on the idea of external galaxies, also known as “island universes. The two debaters Harlow Shapeley who was going against the idea of island universes had a great deal of evidence for his idea that the Milky Way is 10x bigger than anyone has imagined concluding that nothing existed outside of its boundaries including island universes. Shapeley’s opponent, Herber D. Curtis countered his argument with a speech arguing for island universes. Curtis’s speech won the debate which has been the leading idea for evidence on our universe. Although both debaters had good arguments and some points…show more content…
The objective for these scientist at the time was to determine how big the Milky Way was and how far the next nebulae was. Many different scientists played roles in defining the evidence for discovering island universes. As ideas continued to float around most scientist came to the conclusion that nebulae weren’t just composed of starts, but was actually in the process for forming stars and that the whirlpool-like objects seemed like they’d condense into starts or planetary systems over time. As experiments and technology progressed, a man named Edwin Hubble made the discovery that no other astronomer had yet noticed. Hubble discovered a Cepheid variable in the Andromeda Nebula. His discovery proved that the nebula was over 300,000 parsecs or 900,000 light-years in
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