DIMENSIONS OF UNIVERSE

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27208, 27 November 1953, Page 8

DIMENSIONS OF UNIVERSE

“OLDER AND BIGGER THAN BELIEVED” UNIVERSITY RESEARCH IN CALIFORNIA (From a Reuter Correspondent) CALIFORNIA. University of California astronomers now believe they have conclusive proof that the universe is twice as old and twice as big as generally believed. Recent work by Professor Harold Weaver, of the astronomy department of the university, confirms earlier findings by Dr. Walter Baade, of Mount Wilson and Palomar observatories in Southern California. The proof was discovered when Dr. Weaver was working on another astronomical problem. “These results, he continued, “won’t alter our life here on earth, but they will clear up the confusion between radio-active and astronomical determinations of the earth’s age and the evplutionary time scale of the stars.” For a long time. Dr. Weaver said, geologists and astronomers have disagreed about the true age of the earth. The geologists contended the planet Earth should be between 2,000.000,000 and 4.000,000,000 years old. Astronomers insisted that earth could not be older than 1,800.000,000 years. The geologists based their age estimate on the amount of lead remaining in the earth after radio-active decay of uranium. The astronomers made their estimate according to their measurements of the extent of the universe. Dr. Weaver’s findings now set the conception of the universe at 3,600,000,000 years ago. The university astronomer established the age while working out a new way to determine the dynamic constants of the motion of the galaxy. He found a new way to calculate the distance between the star clusters and cepheid variable stars at the outer reaches of the galaxy in his calculations.

“The cepheid variables,” Dr. Weaver explained, “are large pulsating stars, brighter than our sun. Their brightness varies periodically, and the period can be measured. If we consider the duration of the period, brightness, and the motions of these stars relative to our planet, it is possible to determine the distance from the earth in the centre of our galaxy.” Making most of his calculations with the cepheids, Dr. Weaver determined the distance between the earth and the centre of the galaxy was 8.8 units or 29,000 light years. “Then, calculations using data gathered from studies of the cephei, should also show that we are 8.8 units away from our galactic ‘hub.’ Instead, I got the result of 3.85 units, or more than 2.2 times less than the expected answer. “In other words, the original calculations of the distance scale of the universe were wrong by a factor of more than the ratio of 8.8 to 3.85, and the whole system must be more than twice as extensive than we thought it to be. Although the size of the universe is doubled, the dimensions of our galaxy will not be altered in theory by these discoveries. It is comforting to think that we’rp looking twice as far into space with our telescopes than we thought we were only a year ago.”