A century ago, most astronomers believed the Milky Way was the entire universe — a single, all-encompassing island of stars floating in an endless void.That entire picture shattered in the 1920s.Using the giant 100-inch Hooker Telescope on Mount Wilson, Edwin Hubble carefully studied faint, fuzzy “nebulae” that many thought were gas clouds inside our own galaxy. Instead, he proved they were entire galaxies lying millions of light-years beyond the Milky Way. The universe suddenly became vastly larger than anyone had imagined.Even more revolutionary, Hubble discovered that these distant galaxies are racing away from us — and the farther away they are, the faster they’re receding. This astonishing observation revealed that space itself is expanding, like dots on the surface of an inflating balloon.Today, the Hubble Space Telescope (named in his honor) and other powerful instruments have refined these measurements. Scientists now estimate the universe is approximately 13.8 billion years old, with an observable diameter of about 93 billion light-years — and still growing larger every moment. Source/Credit: NASA, European Space Agency
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