One hundred years ago Saturday, humanity learned that the universe is a much bigger place than many thought. The news broke publicly New York Times on November 23, 1924 in a short story above an advertisement for fur coats.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a debate raged among astronomers about the size of the universe. They did not have telescopes in orbit that delivered sublime images of distant celestial wonders, so they could not discern the intricate structure of galaxies and star-forming pillars of creation spanning light years.

With their ground-based telescopes, they could see the planets, stars, and “spiral nebulae.” The problem was that no one was sure what these spiral nebulae were. How big were they and how far away?

Some astronomers argued that they were just clouds of gas spinning inside or on the periphery of the Milky Way. They concluded that our galaxy and little else was all there was, at least all we could see.

Other astronomers argued that the spiral nebulae themselves were huge, distant galaxies similar to our own. The universe, they concluded, was staggeringly vast.

An astronomer named Edwin Hubble settled the debate. Looking through a telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory near Pasadena, he was able to resolve individual stars in the nebulae. In particular, he identified variable stars that brighten and dim in a predictable way that is linked to their brightness.

Thanks to earlier work by a Harvard computer expert named Henrietta Leavitt, Hubble had enough information to calculate the distance to these stars. Running the numbers, he discovered that the spiral nebulae were well outside the Milky Way. He calculated that Andromeda was about 860,000 light years away. Other galaxies were considerably further into the cosmos.

Today we take it for granted that the universe is huge. The Hubble Space Telescope, named after Edwin Hubble, once stared at a seemingly empty black spot in the sky. Where it looked like there was nothing, primordial galaxies came into focus billions of light years away.

One of the gifts of humanity is the ability to know an astonishing truth without going insane. The late, great writer Douglas Adams once wrote, “If life is going to exist in a universe this size, the one thing it can’t afford is a sense of proportion.”

A hundred years ago, humanity learned that it rides on a tiny speck in a sea of ​​stars and galaxies. There may be countless other civilizations out there beyond the reach of current science and technology, but for now we are alone in an unfathomable night.

However, this does not mean that our lives lack purpose or meaning. We instill value through our actions and their impact on those around us. The universe won’t remember us in a million or a billion years, but our families, friends and communities will, and that still matters even in a seemingly limitless universe.

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