It has often been said that newspapers are “history’s first rough draft.” The same is true of science. One could argue that journals fill the role, but historically, the vast majority of the public reads of scientific discoveries and/or events in the newspaper. It is quite interesting to see how these events were interpreted at the time without the benefit of hindsight. The New York Times online archive dates back to the paper’s origins in the 1850’s and represent a rich source of historical material that can be used in the class or for personal research. Here are some historical articles pertaining to astronomy and physics.
Auroral Phenomena– September 5, 1851. This article describes the aftermath of the Carrington Event, the most powerful magnetic storm in recorded history. The aurora was seen across America and telegraph operators could still send messages even after disconnecting the batteries. Below, NASA presents a computer model of the 1859 magnetic storm.
Glowing After – Sunset Skies – December 1, 1883. Three months after the Krakatoa eruption, the skies around the world appeared deep red after sunset as a result of aerosols ejected into the atmosphere. The cause of these sunsets were not known at the time – the article never refers to the Krakatoa eruption.
A Comet Visible by Daylight – September 20, 1882. The Great Comet of 1882, considered the brightest comet of the past 1,000 years, is visible during the day. The image atop this post is this comet. In 2015, the Rosetta mission became the first to attempt a landing on a comet.
The Roentgen Discovery – February 7, 1896. The discovery of x-rays and possible applications in the medical field. A century later, astronomers would use the orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory to discover the universe to be a violent place.
Wireless Signals Across the Ocean – December 15, 1901. Guglielmo Marconi receives radio signals in Newfoundland from London to open the era of mass communication. Decades later, astronomers use radio telescopes to discover pulsars and peer into the center of the galaxy.
The Greatest Telescope in the World – January 27, 1907.Plans to build a 100-inch telescope on the summit of Mt. Wilson in California. Opened in 1917, this telescope is where Edwin Hubble discovered the universe was expanding.
Mt. Wilson 100-inch telescope. Credit: Gregory Pijanowski
Comet Gazers See Flashes – May 19, 1910. Report on Earth passing through tail of Halley’s Comet. The comet tail was 100 degrees long and 10 degrees wide in the sky. Whatever was seen that night, comet tails are much too tenuous to cause flashes in the atmosphere.
Lights All Askew in the Heavens – November 10, 1919. Eddington Expedition proves Einstein’s General Relativity theory correct by measuring the bending of starlight during a total solar eclipse. Relativity has passed every test since, including the recent observation of gravity waves.
Nebula Velocities Support Einstein – June 12, 1931. Edwin Hubble discovers the expansion of the universe as predicted by Einstein’s relativity theory. Actually, Einstein was originally skeptical the universe could expand. It was Fr. Georges Lemaitre, Catholic priest and physicist, who proposed what was later called the Big Bang theory. The word nebula in the title refers to what we now call galaxies.
Lemaitre Follows Two Paths to Truth – February 19, 1933. Fr. Georges Lemaitre does not find a conflict between science and religion. Einstein and Lemaitre, “Have a profound respect and admiration for each other”. Article quotes Einstein as stating, “This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened” regarding Lemaitre’s Big Bang theory.
Fr. Georges Lemaitre (center) and Albert Einstein, January 10, 1933. To the left is Robert Millikan who was the first to measure the charge of an electron. Credit: California Institute of Technology.
Bohr and Einstein at Odds – July 28, 1935. The conflict between relativity and quantum mechanics. The quest to unify the theory of relativity, which governs large objects, and quantum mechanics, which explains physics on an atomic scale, continues to this day.
Science and the Bomb – August 7, 1945. One day after Hiroshima, nuclear fission as a weapon and the implications for humanity are explained.
Mt. Palomar 200-inch telescope. Largest in the world from 1948-97. Credit: Gregory Pijanowski
Radio Telescope to Expose Space – June 19, 1959. Navy to build largest radio telescope in West Virginia. The current radio observatory in Green Bank, WV is surrounded by a 13,000 square mile (slightly larger than the state of Maryland) radio quiet zone, meaning no cell phones, radio, or microwave ovens.
New Clues to the Size of the Universe – March 26, 1963. The brightest objects in the universe, dubbed quasars, are discovered. Located over 10 billion light years away, these objects are so bright some astronomers thought they must reside within the Milky Way. However, further research would prove quasars to be the most distant objects observed by humans.
Signals Imply a Big Bang Universe – May 21, 1965. The discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) proves the universe was born in a hot, dense state aka the Big Bang. The CMB was most recently mapped by the ESA Planck mission. The map shows the state of the universe when it was 380,000 years old.
*Image on top of post is the Great Comet of 1882 from the Cape of Good Hope. Credit: David Gill.
Above is the Halloween radio adaptation of the War of the Worlds by WKBW in Buffalo. WKBW originally broadcasted War of the Worlds in 1968 and updated versions throughout the 1970’s. For myself, it was a Halloween tradition to sit on the front steps, chow down some Halloween candy, and listen to the broadcast. Although the program would start at 11 PM, I had no worries, as going to a Catholic school, the following morning was All Saints Day and that meant an off day. It wasn’t only Western New Yorkers who listened to the dramatization of their city being destroyed by Martians, WKBW’s 50,000 watt transmitter would reach as far into the Carolinas once the Sun set.
The 1968 broadcast was an homage to Orson Wells legendary 1938 radio version. The events were transplanted to the Buffalo region. In 1968, KB DJ Danny Neaverth opens up the proceedings with a brief introduction. If you lived in Buffalo during that era, Neaverth’s presence around town seemed ubiquitous. I can remember watching Neaverth’s noon weather report on WKBW-TV, hearing him at an evening’s Braves game handling the PA duties (two for McAdoo!), then being woken up by Neaverth’s morning show at 6 AM so I could deliver the Courier-Express.
The 1971 version has an updated introduction by Jeff Kaye. That intro describes various events caused by the 1968 program. Much like the myth of the 1938 panic, there is some hyperbole involved. The local newspapers did not report anything unusual the following day except for a few calls made into the station. After the intro, the broadcast commences with the real newscast from that day. The first sign of something different is when the news ends with a report from Mt. Palomar Observatory that nuclear sized explosions had been observed on Mars.
The real director of the Mt. Palomar Observatory at the time was Horace Babcock (the broadcast used the name Benjamin Spencer). In 1953, Babcock first proposed the use of adaptive optics to reduce atmospheric interference for astronomical imaging. This technique, which utilizes a laser created guide star and deformable mirrors in a telescope’s instrument package, is standard on all modern observatories. From 1947-93, Mt. Palomar was the largest telescope in the world.
The 200-inch Hale Telescope at Mt. Palomar. Photo: Gregory Pijanowski.
Were the nuclear sized explosions on Mars a realistic plot point? At first glance that might not seem to be the case. However, keep in mind the Martians made it to Earth in a 24-48 hour period. Standard chemical rockets take about 8-10 months to complete a voyage to Mars. What could have propelled the Martians so fast to Earth? One possibility is nuclear pulse propulsion. The concept is targeted nuclear explosions are used to provide impulse to spacecraft. From 1958-63, Project Orion worked on such a propulsion method. Eventually, the project was shut down by the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty which, obviously, would not apply to invading Martians.
To be fair, the folks at WKBW were concerned with providing programming that had a Halloween ambiance rather than scientific rigor. And they accomplished this by letting the invasion gradually slide into the program. It is 20 minutes in until the invasion occupies the show completely. During that first 20 minutes, listeners are treated to a time capsule of 1968 radio. The news of the day opens with the Vietnam War and ongoing peace talks (the 1971 version also would open with news from Vietnam, which gives you an idea how well those talks went), Governor Rockefellar breaking ground on the new UB Amherst campus, and various local police busts. The video removed the music interludes for copyright purposes. Ads include an 8-track stereo player for $49.95 ($345 today) and shoes for $13.00 ($90 today). The broadcast takes a dramatic turn with the announcement of a meteor strike on Grand Island.
When that announcement was made, it could be heard throughout the East Coast. WKBW transmitted with a 50,000 watt tower, the maximum allowed for AM stations. At night, the range of AM stations expand greatly. I can remember listening to Sabre-Bruins hockey games and switching back and forth between the Buffalo and Boston broadcasts. Also, I have tuned into St. Louis’ KMOX in both Buffalo and Houston during the late 70’s when Bob Costas worked there. While FM has advantages in sound quality over AM, it cannot match the range of AM radio. And that is due to the nature of the Earth’s ionosphere.
Credit: NASA
During the day, ultraviolet and x-ray radiation strike atoms in the upper atmosphere. This energy ejects electrons, which carry a negative electric charge and forms the various ionosphere layers. During the day, the lower D and E layers absorb AM radio waves. Here, the atmosphere is still thick enough so electrons that absorb radio waves collide into air molecules dampening the radio signal. At night, these lower layers dissipate as there is no sunlight to continue the ionization process. This leaves radio waves free to reflect off the higher F ionosphere layer. Here, the atmosphere is tenuous enough so collisions with air molecules are rare. As a result, AM radio waves are reflected back to the ground enhancing the station’s range. FM stations do not enjoy this effect as their transmissions are at shorter wavelengths, reducing the collision rate with free ions in the F layer.
For those who heard the original broadcast outside of the Buffalo area, and those listening to it now, here is a map to give you a framework of the events:
Nominally a sleepy rural area outside of Buffalo, Grand Island has had an interesting history. Navy Island, adjacent to NW Grand Island, was once considered a potential site for the United Nations. In 1825, a city on the island called Ararat was proposed as a site for Jewish refugees which never came to fruition. The Niagara River current, as mentioned in the broadcast, is swift at 3 feet per second and would pull anyone trying to swim across away and over the Falls eventually. That, of course, happens when the Grand Island bridges are blown in a vain attempt to trap the Martians on the island.
Grand Island Bridges. Credit: amandabanana87 https://flic.kr/p/6PVNVR
The invading Martians make their way downtown to Niagara Square where Irv Weinstein is stationed atop City Hall. Weinstein started on the radio side of WKBW in the late 50’s, moving over to television in the mid 60’s. For the next next three decades, Weinstein was the most prominent news figure in the Buffalo area. Weinstein did refrain from using his trademark “pistol packing punks” (heat ray packing punks?) in the War of the Worlds. I do not know if there was actually a communications center on top of City Hall back then, but there is an observation platform. You can see Niagara Falls from up there, and on the clearest of clear days, the CN Tower in Toronto.
On top of City Hall. Credit: Gregory Pijanowski
The dramatization concludes where it began, at the WKBW radio station which was at 1430 Main St. a block north of Utica St. The voice of the last surviving news reporter belongs to Jeff Kaye. You may find that voice familiar. During the 1980’s, Jeff Kaye did an admirable job filling the large shoes of John Facenda at NFL Films. Kaye also produced the War of the Worlds broadcast. After the Martian’s poison gas takes out the last of the WKBW team, Dan Neaverth returns to conclude the broadcast noting that H.G. Wells ended the War of the Worlds with the Martians dying off, unable to resist Earth’s microbes. Wrote Wells:
“But there are no bacteria in Mars, and directly these invaders arrived, directly they drank and fed, our microscopic allies began to work their overthrow. Already when I watched them (the Martians) they were irrevocably doomed, dying and rotting even as they went to and fro.”
And more than likely, Wells was right about the lack of microbes on Mars, at least on the surface anyway. Unlike Earth, Mars does not have an ozone layer to block out ultraviolet radiation from the Sun. Also, Mars lacks a magnetic field. The Earth’s magnetic field shields life from harmful cosmic rays Unabated, this radiation is highly harmful to any life on the Martian surface, whether it be microbes or astronauts in the future. However, the subsurface of Mars may be another story.
One of the key discoveries on Mars the past few decades has been the existence of water below the surface. On the surface, the lack of atmospheric pressure reduces the boiling point of water so that if it does not freeze it will evaporate quickly. However, the subsurface of Mars has been found to have significant amounts of water. Planning for future human exploration of Mars entails utilizing this water for long duration stays on the red planet. Moreover, where there is water, there may be life. And this leads to the issue of planetary protection.
NASA has an Office of Planetary Protection. The goal is to prevent Earth microbes from contaminating Mars and vise versa. This will become a growing concern for the space program when attempts are made to land humans on Mars or if a Mars sample return mission is sent. Drilling for water on Mars may expose an ancient subsurface biosphere, and certainly humans could carry Earth microbes to Mars. While the risks involved are still a matter of scientific debate, Wells was very prescient to include this factor in the War of the Worlds.
Regardless of what we discover about Mars in the next few decades, there was a deeper lesson in the original novel that tends to get lost in modern versions. The WKBW broadcast capped a night of Halloween themed programming and the primary goal was, as Orson Wells said to conclude his 1938 version, “Dressing up in a sheet, jumping out of a bush and saying, ‘Boo!”. H.G Wells had intended War of the Worlds as a critique of colonialism. Wells makes this clear on page three of the novel:
“And before we judge of them (Martians) too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?”
At the close of WKBW’s The War of the Worlds,Dan Neaverth asks the audience to think about what they would have done if the invasion was real. An equally important question to ask is what you would do if you were on the invading side. Would you join the invasion as the social forces of war coalesced around you, or would you resist the tide, as Bertrand Russell did in World War I:
“I knew it was my business to protest, however futile that protest might be. I felt that for the honour of human nature those who were not swept off their feet should show that they stood firm.”
Astronomy is perhaps the most ubiquitous of human endeavors. Regardless of time or location, people have studied the night sky for an understanding of the universe. All five continents contain ancient sites used for astronomical purposes. From the ancient Egyptians noting the simultaneous rising of Sirius and the Sun to predict seasonal flooding, Chinese observation of the supernova that produced the Crab Nebula on July 4, 1054, Islamic astronomers high-precision measurements of celestial objects for time-keeping, astronomy has been a truly multi-cultural endeavor. The next generation of 30-meter telescopes promises to continue that heritage.
During the 20th century, large scale astronomy was dominated by the United States. When the 200-inch Mt. Palomar telescope opened for business in 1948, the next largest telescope outside the U.S. was the 74-inch David Dunlap Observatory just north of Toronto. The two World Wars created economic chaos across Europe and Asia. At the same time, the vision of George Ellery Hale enabled the U.S. to surge ahead of the world in building large telescopes. These two factors conspired to cause a listing of astronomy research towards the U.S. during this period.
From 1897 to 1993, the largest telescope in the world would be one designed by George Ellery Hale*. The first would be the 40-inch refracting telescope at Yerkes Observatory. This remains the largest refractor in the world. The final would be the 200-inch reflecting telescope at Mt. Palomar. In between was the 100-inch telescope at Mt. Wilson where galaxies outside the Milky Way and the expansion of the universe was discovered. These telescopes stretched the limits of the single mirror design. A new type of mirror was required to construct larger telescopes, and the segmented mirror was the answer.
The 10-meter Keck Observatory in Hawaii ushered in the era of the segmented mirror design. The next generation of 30-meter telescopes, due to commence operations in the next decade, will radically expand Earth-based observatory capabilities. In fact, these giant mirrors, combined with adaptive optics technology to remove atmospheric turbulence from their imaging, promise to have resolution capabilities several times that of the Hubble Space Telescope.
The first question one might ask is what is a segmented mirror? Lets take a look at the image below:
Credit: Palomar Observatory/California Institute of Technology
This is the 200-inch (5 meter) Palomar mirror as it is removed to be aluminized. Its total area is about 20 square meters. Single mirrors larger than this are problematic as the weight requires a massive support structure. Another factor is economics. When the Keck Observatory was in the planning stage during the late 1970’s, a 10-meter mirror was estimated to cost $1 Billion ($2.9 Billion in 2015 dollars). Funding prospects for that amount were rather bleak.
Now take a look at the mirror below:
Credit: This image was created by Prof. Andrea Ghez and her research team at UCLA and are from data sets obtained with the W. M. Keck Telescopes.
This is the 10-meter Keck mirror. As you can see, rather than a single mirror like Palomar, it consists of 36 hexagonal segments 1.8 meters wide. Each mirror segment is also very thin at 75 mm. The impact is two-fold as the total weight of the Keck mirror array is the same as the single Palomar mirror. As a result, the cost of the Keck Observatory was reduced to $270 million. The cost reduction enabled the Keck Observatory to obtain funding from the William M. Keck Foundation in 1985. When the Keck I opened in 1993, it was the first non-Hale telescope to become the world’s largest in 96 years.
The video below has an inside look at the Keck and its accomplishments:
Since the Keck, the Gran Telescopio Canarias 10.4-meter telescope was built in the Canary Islands as well as the 9.2-meter South African Large Telescope (SALT) in the Northern Cape region. The Gran Telescopio Canarias became the first world’s largest telescope outside the United States since the 1800’s. That telescope was funded mostly by the government of Spain, along with minor contributions from Mexico and the University of Florida. The SALT was funded by a partnership between South Africa, United States, Germany, Poland, India, United Kingdom and New Zealand. The next generation of telescopes will continue the trend of international partnerships for funding.
The success of the segmented mirror has prompted the design of 25-39 meter telescopes. This is an expansion of telescope size unprecedented is in modern times. Thirty years after the 100-inch Mt. Wilson telescope was built, the 200-inch Mt. Palomar telescope doubled aperture size for the world’s largest telescope. The planned 39-meter European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) will nearly quadruple Keck’s mirror size in the same time frame. Three telescopes of this class are set to commence operations in the next decade and they are:
The design of this telescope is quite interesting as it uses the upper end of monolithic mirror design as the basis for a segmented mirror. The GMT will package seven 8.4 meter mirrors into an array 24.5 meters wide. The telescope will be located at Las Campanas Peak in the Atacama Desert. The total cost will be $1 billion and funding is provided by the Carnegie Institute for Science (who also funded both Mt. Wilson and Mt. Palomar), Smithsonian Institution, and several American, Australian, Korean, and Brazilian universities. The GMT will begin observations in 2021 and will be fully operational in 2024. The image below provides a good perspective on the size of the mirror array:
This telescope will be located in Hawaii on the summit of Mauna Kae where the Keck Observatory is located. Appropriate from an astronomy standpoint, as the TMT is the successor to Keck in that its mirrors will consist of 492 segments 1.44 meters wide. The location has also become problematic as a result of protests by indigenous Hawaiians who consider the peak of Mauna Kae to be a scared site. The protests have stopped construction for now. While its more than likely the 18 story high TMT will eventually be built, its unknown what impact the current impasse will have on its planned timeline to be completed in 2024. The TMT is expected to cost $1.4 billion to build and is funded by a consortium including Caltech and partners from China, India, Japan, Canada.
The E-ELT will be the granddaddy of the next generation of telescopes. Like the GMT, the E-ELT will be located in the Atacama Desert in Chile. Its mirror will be 39 meters wide and consist of 798 hexagonal mirrors each 1.45 meters wide. The cost of the E-ELT is expected to be 1.1 billion Euro. The telescope will be funded by the European Southern Observatory with contributions from its 16 member nations. Currently, the member nations are all from Europe with pending applications from Poland and Brazil. First light is expected in 2026. An artist conception of the E-ELT is below. It is an ideal site to observe the Milky Way.
Credit: ESO
Why Chile?
The northern Chile desert provides the desired combination of dry air, high altitude, and lack of light pollution. Currently, the ESO operates the Very Large Telescope (VLA) in the Atacama Desert. The VLA has four telescopes each with 8.2 meter mirrors. Also located there is the large 66 antennae ALMA radio telescope array which is run by a consortium consisting of the United States, Canada, Japan, ESO member states and Chile. The Astronomical Tourism website has a list of the remarkable number of observatories in Chile here. Among some of the advantages of being in the Southern Hemisphere is that the Milky Way can arch overhead making it a very easy target to observe. By 2025, it is expected that half of the world’s observing power will be located in Chile. Below is a video that demonstrates the awesome clarity of the Chilean skies.
Expected Performance
All three observatories will utilize adaptive optics system. This is a means to eliminate the twinkle in stars caused by atmospheric turbulence during observations. While the twinkling of stars can have great aesthetic value, it hampers the performance of a telescope. Adaptive optics works by shooting a laser into the sky near the observation target. This laser excites sodium atoms located about 60 miles above the Earth’s surface. The excited atoms then release the energy in the form of light causing an artificial star to be created in the sky. The artificial star is used as a baseline to measure atmospheric turbulence. This in turn is used to adjust a small deformable mirror in the instrument package of the telescope. This deformable mirror removes most of the twinkling from the observed object prior to being imaged. The picture below shows the galactic center before and after adaptive optics from the Keck Observatory is applied.
Credit: Keck Observatory and the UCLA Galactic Center Group
The large mirrors combined with adaptive optics is expected to give these telescopes resolution several times that of the Hubble Space Telescope. In fact, the E-ELT is expected to provide 15 times the resolution ability of the Hubble. To put the E-ELT in proper perspective, this telescope will collect more light than all the existing 8-10 meter telescopes combined. Among the science objectives of these telescopes will be to peer into the farthest regions of the universe to study the first galaxies formed to the detection of Earth-sized planets and characterization of exoplanet atmospheres. The latter could possible provide evidence of bio-signatures.
The cost of this science is not cheap. However, it is not more expensive than other large scale infrastructure projects. For example, the total cost of the three new observatories combined ($3.5 billion) is identical as the new Detroit-Windsor bridge to be built during the same period. Nonetheless, the cost of large observatories are now on the scale that international partnerships must be used for funding. American society, competitive as it is, tends to fret when it comes to the possible loss of a dominant leadership position in any given field. However, this recent development simply puts astronomy back at its natural state. Rather than being an American endeavor, large scale astronomy research is now a global venture, just as it was during ancient times. And that is exactly as it should be.
*There were other telescopes larger than Yerkes in 1897 such as the 72-inch Leviathan of Parsonstown, but those had fallen into disrepair and were no longer in use.
**Image on top of post is the E-ELT compared to the VLA and Statue of Liberty. Credit: ESO.
