Tired Light, Geographic Cures, and Three Heads in a Window
Fritz Zwicky, the Bulgarian cosmologist, was also a notorious head case. He was incensed by Hubble’s discovery and proof that the universe was not, in fact, static and stationary, but rather expanding and at dazzling speed. Zwicky was also not a people-person, and referred to people he didn’t like as “spherical bastards” because, he said, they were bastards no matter which direction you looked at them. Zwicky believed that redshifts were not evidence of an expanding universe at all, but rather a case of Tired Light, galactic gravity draining light of its energy over vast distances. While most scientists agreed with Hubble, Zwicky had his followers and they were known as the “Tired Light Brigade” and worked fruitlessly to bang the drum against Hubble and his discoveries.
I start there, this morning, because there are Tired Light Brigades all around us who, given the chance, would crush our souls—if only because, and despite money and privilege and every advantage of House Plantagenet, they can’t seem to find their own. Such was Ketchum, Idaho.
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