Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Roger McCarthy's avatar

TBF until the 1950s what we now call galaxies were generally described as nebulas and the term was only employed of the Milky Way (clue is in the name).

Clearly took some time for the understanding of what those smudges you could see on a telescope actually were to filter through - someone like Nation educated in the 1930s and 1940s would have probably learned what science they had from pre-Hubble textbooks and from popular fiction when the universe was both considered far, far smaller than we now know it to be and faster than light travel far easier to imagine.

Expand full comment

No posts