The Scientific Odyssey

Wherein we discuss the detection of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson.

This week we look at the work of a number of astrophysicists including Cecilia Payne, Arthur Eddington, Hans Bethe and Charles Critchfield, and Fred Hoyle and Willie Fowler to better understand how the elements are made within the cores of stars. Special introduction by Stephen Guerra of the History of the Papacy and the Beyond the Big Screen podcasts.

In 1948, one of the most important papers in the history of science was published in the pages of the Physical Review.  In it, authors Ralph Alpher, Hans Bethe (in absentia) and George Gamow not only perpetrated one of the greatest plays on words in the annals of science, they also put forward the physical calculations in support that the universe as we see it today began from a small, hot, dense state known as the Primeval Fireball. In this episode, we trace the development of that idea.

In our third and final installment of the life of George Ellery Hale, we look at the establishment of the Mt. Wilson Observatory and his other endeavors.  We also examine the psychological pressures that drove him and eventually lead to his mental breakdown.

In the decade between 1890 and 1900, George Hale went from being a promising graduate of MIT to the world famous director of the Yerkes Observatory.  In this episode, we follow his life and work during this critical time.

This week we begin a biographical series on George Ellery hale by covering his life from his childhood in Chicago up through his graduation and marriage.

The shift from astronomy to astrophysics necessitated the development of new tools of observation at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.  In this episode, we look at the rise of the reflecting telescopes and the men who use them including, James Keeler and George Ritchey, probably the greatest telescope designer in history.

In 1927 Fr. Georges Lemaitre published a paper in a little known Belgian scientific journal that described an expanding universe.  Two years later, Milton Humason and Edwin Hubble presented evidence to support support this model.  In this episode, we look at the development of the idea of a universe that was not static or steady.

On November 25th of 1915, Albert Einstein presented a paper on his General Theory of Relativity that by its end had conclusively shown that the Vulcan hypothesis was not necessary to explain the precession of the perihelion of the orbit of Mercury.  It also completely reimagined the structure of space and time and remade the universe.  In this episode of the podcast, we follow Einstein's journey of discovery from the work of James Clerk Maxwell to the eclipse observations of Arthur Stanley Eddington.

In 1925, the astronomer Henry Norris Russell read a paper at the 33rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society.  The paper, written by Edwin Hubble, a staff astronomer at the Mt. Wilson observatory, detailed observations of Cepheid variable stars in the Andromeda Nebula. These observations and the analysis of them showed that the spiral was a million light years outside the Milky Way Galaxy, thus establishing it as an island universe once and for all.

On April 26th of 1920, Harlow Shapley and Heber Curtis presented talks on the idea of island universes to the National Academy of Sciences.  Held at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Great Debate, as it would come to be known, would showcase two differing views of the scale and structure of the universe.

In 1914, Harlow Shapley moved to work at the Mt. Wilson Observatory. Over the course of five years, using the 60 inch reflector there, he observed the 75 visible globular clusters and developed a whole new model of the Milky Way Galaxy and our place in it.

In our final episode of this mini-series on the women who worked at the Harvard College Observatory, we dive into the life of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin from her time at Cambridge University to her life in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

In this episode we take a look at the history of the development of the metric system out of the French Revolution.

Annie Jump Cannon and Henrietta Swan Leavitt would form the core of the calculation staff at the Harvard College Observatory for nearly two decades.  They oversaw the transition of the Observatory from the directorship of Edward Charles Pickering to Harlow Shapley and established the dominant classification systems and physical laws for stellar spectra and variable stars in the early 20th century that would lead to foundational discoveries in the fields of astronomy and astrophysics.