to s, ofit into ant acts of valor—rescuing droy across ttlefields of France, embarrassing s. It all seemed too good to be true. It was.

    For all s, erate liar.

    ttle odd, for inction t  times almost ludicrously golden. At a single rack meetin 1906, , s put, discus, anding eam—t is seven first places in onemeet—and came in t a state record for the highjump in Illinois.

    As a sc, and rouble gaining admission to studypronomy at ty of Cally, tment  Miced to be one of t R Oxford. tly turned urned toon in 1913 alking und accent—not quite Britis not quite not—t h him for life.

    ter claimed to  of tury practicinglaucky, in fact eacball coacedly attaining orate and passing briefly tice and almost certainly never  fired in anger.)In 1919, noy, o California and took up a position at tilson Observatory near Los Angeles. Sly, and more ttle unexpectedly,  outstanding astronomer of tietury.

    It is  to consider just tle  time. Astronomers today believe the visible universe.

    t’s a  o suppose. Ifgalaxies  orium—tonGarden, say, or t rop named Bruce Gregory uallycomputed t put o t o us ly one: tto be eit of tself or one of many distant, peripheral puffs of gas.

    rated  belief was.

    Over t decade, ackled t fundamental questions of t, and o ans is necessary to knoain galaxies are and  t is knoy). t gives t doesn’t tell us o begin  you need andard candles”—stars ed and used asbenco measure tness (and ive distance) of otars.

    o come along soon a