In 1927, a prescient astronomer named Georges Lemaître looked at data showing how galaxies move. He noticed something peculiar – all of them appeared to be speeding away from Earth. Not only that, but the farther away they were, the faster they went. He determined a mathematical way to represent this, and connected his relationship to Einstein’s law of General Relativity to produce a grand idea: That of a universe continually expanding. It was a radical idea then, but today it fits with our conception of a universe spawned by a Big Bang.
If you’re an astronomy trivia buff, the name associated with the Big Bang is Edwin Hubble, who also has a rather famous telescope named after himself. Hubble also came up with the concept, but Lemaître beat him to the punch, though his idea got little attention at the time. Now, he may finally share in the recognition for his revolutionary theory.
It’s too late to rename the Hubble Space Telescope, which is in its twilight years of use anyway. But astronomers are considering renaming the law that explains how the universe expands, from the Hubble Law to the Hubble-Lemaître Law.
