The topic of the Great Debate
Shapley believed that “spiral nebulae” like Andromeda (now known to be our closest galactic neighbor) were part of the Milky Way. To regard them as anything more was to admit the cosmos was larger than most astronomers in the early 20th century were willing to accept.
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Who started the great debate?
Bringing the two astronomers together in a public debate was the idea of George Ellery Hale, the founder and director of the Mount Wilson Observatory. Hale talked Charles Abbot, the home secretary of the National Academy of Sciences, into organising the 1920 event.
Who proposed the great debate?
Much of the lore of the Great Debate grew out of two papers published by Shapley and by Curtis in the May 1921 issue of the Bulletin of the National Research Council. The published papers each included counter arguments to the position advocated by the other scientist at the 1920 meeting.
What was the main lesson of the great debate of 1920?
The participants were Heber D. Curtis, then of Lick Observatory, and Harlow Shapley of Mount Wilson Solar Observatory. In brief, the controversy concerned the scale and makeup of the universe. Shapley argued that the universe was comprised of a single galaxy, while Curtis held that it contained many galaxies.
Who proposed the Shapley Curtis debate?
Table 1 presents some aspects of the lives and works of the four people most closely associated with the 1920 debate: Hale who suggested it, Shapley and Curtis who carried it out, and Edwin Hubble who, a few years later, collected the data that settled the issue of island universes.
Why can’t we take a picture of our galaxy?
It takes 250 million years for our Sun and the solar system to go all the way around the center of the Milky Way. We can only take pictures of the Milky Way from inside the galaxy, which means we don’t have an image of the Milky Way as a whole.
Why was there such a great debate in the 1920s about the future?
In general, the modernists won the debate in the 1920s, mainly because US society has vastly changed and become far more modern, both socially and technologically, since then. … In our present-day society, there are aspects present that reflect the perspectives of both the fundamentalists and modernists.
What are the most controversial topics 2020?
- Civil Rights. …
- Censorship and Freedom of Speech. …
- Climate Change. …
- Death Penalty/Capital Punishment. …
- Abortion. …
- Social Security. …
- Artificial Intelligence. …
- Health Insurance.
What are the most controversial topics 2021?
- Is it ethical to use animals for testing?
- High school students should not be allowed cell phones in school.
- Global warming and its impacts on humanity.
- Causes of increasing racism in the United States.
- Marijuana should be legal for its use in medicines.
What are the most controversial topics?
- Abortion.
- Artificial Intelligence.
- Censorship and Freedom of Speech.
- Civil Rights.
- Climate Change.
- Death Penalty/Capital Punishment.
- Health Insurance.
- Religious Freedom.
How did Shapley determine the center of the galaxy?
Calculating Center
Shapley correctly determined the galactic center of the Milky Way to be located in the constellation of Sagittarius. He did this by mapping out a three-dimensional distribution of the globular clusters.
What discovery ended the great debate?
Then, two years later, new observations of the spiral nebula in Andromeda blew up the whole debate. Astronomer Edwin Hubble (for whom the Hubble Space Telescope is named) succeeded in taking images that resolved the Andromeda object into stars — enormous numbers of them, very faint and very, very far away.
Who coined the term dark matter?
The term dark matter was coined in 1933 by Fritz Zwicky of the California Institute of Technology to describe the unseen matter that must dominate one feature of the universe—the Coma Galaxy Cluster.
Was Shapley and Curtis correct?
Thus, Shapley proved to be correct about the size of our galaxy and the sun’s location in it, while Curtis correctly predicted that the universe is composed of many galaxies, among them the spiral nebulae which are very similar to our own galaxy – a point Shapley readily conceded when the new evidence came to light.
How did the Shapley Curtis debate start?
Much of the lore of the Great Debate grew out of two papers published by Shapley and by Curtis in the May 1921 issue of the Bulletin of the National Research Council. The published papers each included counter arguments to the position advocated by the other scientist at the 1920 meeting.
What kind of galaxy do we live in?
We live in one of the arms of a large spiral galaxy called the Milky Way. The Sun and its planets (including Earth) lie in this quiet part of the galaxy, about half way out from the centre.