• Question: what do you think is the most important space descovery ever?

    Asked by Grace.S to Hugh, Helen on 20 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Hugh Osborn

      Hugh Osborn answered on 20 Nov 2014:

      Great question.

      Hubble’s discovery that the universe is expanding and had a beginning 13.8 billion years ago is extremely important.

      As were Gallileo, Copernicus and Kepler’s contributions to showing that the Sun, rather than the Earth, was at the centre of the solar system. In some ways that idea kick-started the scientific enlightenment.

      But I’m actually going to go with what WILL be the greatest space discovery ever – when life is found on another world. That discovery would change our species’ entire view of the universe. And yes, I think it’s a matter of when rather than if…

    • Photo: Helen Johnson

      Helen Johnson answered on 21 Nov 2014:

      That’s really tricky! I think Hubble’s realisation that we were only one of very many galaxies, and that the Universe must be expanding, has to be right up there with the most important. Also the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background, which is basically a heat signature left over from the Big Bang – and one of the biggest reasons we have for believing in such a theory. Brian Cox talks about it a little here, around 52 minutes in: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0276q28/human-universe-4-a-place-in-space-and-time We can see in this image lots of tiny temperature differences in the Universe just after the Big Bang, and we think that’s the reason we had matter start to clump together to form structures, like eventually our galaxy 🙂

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