After Hubble confirmed that spiral nebulae were external galaxies, how drastically did the perceived size of the known universe change?
Answer
It instantly expanded from tens of thousands of light-years to distances in the millions of light-years.
The shift in the conceptual size of the universe wrought by Hubble’s work was immediate and monumental. Before his findings, the perceived boundary of existence was roughly the extent of the Milky Way, estimated in the tens of thousands of light-years. Once he proved that objects like the Andromeda Nebula were external galaxies residing millions of light-years away, the scale of the observable cosmos was multiplied nearly instantaneously, setting the lower bound for its size in the millions of light-years and completely redefining spatial reality for astronomers.
Related Questions
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