Science: Green Light from Palomar

After 20 months of operation, the great 200-inch Hale telescope on Palomar Mountain yielded its most significant discovery. Palomar's Dr. Milton La Salle Humason, a diffident, self-effacing expert whose own colleagues know almost nothing about him except his birthplace (Dodge Center, Minn.), last week announced that he had photographed the spectra of nebulae 360 million lightyears* away. He found that their light showed the mysterious "red-shift," indicating that they are moving away from the earth at 38,000 m.p.s.—one-fifth of the speed of light.

Astral Speedometer. The redshift was first discovered by Edwin...

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