October 25, 2000

Features

Lyman Spitzer's space telescope dramatically changed astronomy

By Billy Goodman

It's the most diverse scientific tool ever, one astrophysicist claims: "There's no area in astronomy where it has not done something like no other instrument before it."

It's the Hubble Space Telescope, and it is largely the vision of one man.

Boomerang project explores origins, geometry of the universe

At a NASA press conference on April 26, 2000, an international team of astrophysicists led by California Institute of Technology professor Andrew Lange '80 presented startling new images of the heavens. To obtain these remarkable pictures - formed by minute temperature differences in the microwave spectrum of the embryonic universe - the scientists, who dubbed their project "Boomerang," built a two-ton telescope armed with an array of sensitive detectors.