text:
Radiation Therapy and Chemotherapy, With or Without Cetuximab, Followed by Surgery in Treating Patients With Locally Advanced Esophageal Cancer That Can Be Removed by Surgery
|The safety and scientific validity of this study is the responsibility of the study sponsor and investigators. Listing a study does not mean it has been evaluated by the U.S. Federal Government. Read our disclaimer for details.
|ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT01107639
Recruitment Status : Completed
First Posted : April 21, 2010
Last Update Posted : May 15, 2019
- Study Details
- Tabular View
- No Results Posted
- Disclaimer
- How to Read a Study Record
RATIONALE: Radiation therapy uses high-energy x-rays and to kill tumor cells. Drugs used in chemotherapy, such as docetaxel and cisplatin, work in different ways to stop the growth of tumor cells, either by killing the cells or by stopping them from dividing. Monoclonal antibodies, such as cetuximab, can block tumor growth in different ways. Some block the ability of tumor cells to grow and spread. Others find tumor cells and help kill them or carry tumor-killing substances to them. It is not yet known whether giving radiation therapy together with chemotherapy is more effective with or without cetuximab in treating patients with esophageal cancer.
PURPOSE: This randomized phase III trial is studying giving radiation therapy together with chemotherapy, with or without cetuximab, followed by surgery in treating patients with locally advanced esophageal cancer that can be removed by surgery.
|Condition or disease
|Adenocarcinoma of the Gastroesophageal Junction Esophageal Cancer
|Biological: cetuximab Drug: cisplatin Drug: docetaxel Procedure: adjuvant therapy Procedure: neoadjuvant therapy
|Phase 3
- To determine the efficacy of neoadjuvant radiochemotherapy comprising docetaxel, cisplatin, and radiotherapy in combination with cetuximab followed by surgery and adjuvant cetuximab versus neoadjuvant radiochemotherapy comprising docetaxel, cisplatin, and radiotherapy followed by surgery in patients with locally advanced esophageal carcinoma.
- To compare the toxicity of the two therapy arms.
- To determine patterns of failure overall and with regard to histology.
- To evaluate economic aspects in a subproject and to perform a radiotherapy quality assurance program.
OUTLINE: This is a multicenter study. Patients are stratified according to center, histology (adenocarcinoma vs squamous cell carcinoma), primary tumor (T2 vs T3-4), and gender (male vs female). Patients are randomized to 1 of 2 treatment arms.
Arm A:
- Induction chemotherapy (docetaxel and cisplatin) and concurrent cetuximab Patients receive docetaxel IV over 1 hour and cisplatin IV over 1 hour on day 1 and cetuximab IV over 1-2 hours on day 1, 8, and 15. Treatment repeats every 21 days for 2 courses.
- Chemotherapy (docetaxel and cisplatin), cetuximab, and concurrent radiotherapy Beginning in week 7, patients receive cetuximab IV over 1 hour, docetaxel IV over 30 minutes, cisplatin IV over 1 hour on days 43, 50, 57, 64, and 71 and undergo radiotherapy 5 days a week for 5 weeks. Patients then undergo surgery 4-7 weeks after completion of radiotherapy.
- Adjuvant cetuximab Beginning 3-6 weeks after completion of surgery, patients receive cetuximab IV over 1-2 hours once every 2 weeks for a total of 6 doses.
- Arm B: Patients receive induction chemotherapy comprising docetaxel IV and cisplatin IV for 2 courses as in arm A. Beginning in week 7, patients receive docetaxel IV, cisplatin IV, and concurrent radiotherapy for 5 weeks as in arm A. Patients then undergo surgery 4-7 weeks after completion of radiotherapy.
After completion of study therapy, patients are followed up at 1 (arm B) or 6 (arm A) months, every 3 months for 3 years, and then every 6 months for 2 years.
|Study Type :
|Interventional (Clinical Trial)
|Actual Enrollment :
|297 participants
|Intervention Model:
|Factorial Assignment
|None (Open Label)
|Primary Purpose:
|Official Title:
|Multimodal Therapy With and Without Cetuximab in Patients With Locally Advanced Esophageal Carcinoma - An Open-Label Phase III Trial
|Actual Study Start Date :
|May 27, 2010
|Actual Primary Completion Date :
|October 6, 2016
|Actual Study Completion Date :
|December 9, 2018
Experimental: Additional immunotherapy (cetuximab)
All patients in the experimental arm will be given additional immunotherapy (cetuximab) during cycles 1 and 2, during RT and after surgery.
Biological: cetuximab
Loading dose 400 mg/m2 2h infusion Weekly: 250 mg/m2 1h infusion
Other Name: Erbitux
Drug: cisplatin
Drug: docetaxel
Other Name: Taxotere or generic product
Procedure: adjuvant therapy
During the adjuvant phase, all infusions, given every two weeks, will be at a dose of 500mg/m².
Procedure: neoadjuvant therapy
During the neoadjuvant phase, the first infusion of cetuximab should be at a dose of 400 mg/m² administered over a period of 2 hours and all subsequent infusions, given weekly, should be of 250 mg/m² over a period of 1 hour, unless any infusion related reaction was observed at a previous infusion. (The maximum infusion rate is 10 mg/min, corresponding to 2 mL/min ready-to-use solution.
Active Comparator: Without additional immunotherapy
Standard therapy without immunotherapy (cetuximab).
Drug: cisplatin
Drug: docetaxel
Other Name: Taxotere or generic product
- Progression-free survival (PFS) [ Time Frame: time from randomization to a defined event. ]
time from randomization to one of the following events, whichever comes first:
- Tumor progression at any time (progression of primary tumor or local lymph nodes, appearance of new lesions)
- Recurrence at local, regional or distant site after surgery
- Death from any cause
- Progression-free survival after surgery [ Time Frame: from date of surgery to an event as defined in PFS. ]
- Adverse events according to CTCAE version 4.0 and major postoperative complications [ Time Frame: during treatment and follow-up period. ]
- Pathological remission [ Time Frame: Assessed according to the tumor regression model of Mandard ]
- Overall survival [ Time Frame: time from trial randomization to the date of death from any cause ]
- Time to locoregional failure after R0 resection [ Time Frame: from date of surgery to date of first documented loco-regional failure ]
- Time to systemic failure after R0 resection [ Time Frame: from date of surgery to date of first documented systemic failure ]
- In-hospital mortality [ Time Frame: occurring after surgery but while the patient remains in hospital ]
- Time to progression (TTP) [ Time Frame: Time to progression is defined as time from randomization to one of the following events, whichever comes first: - Tumor progression at any time. - Recurrence at local, regional or distant site after surgery. - Death due to tumor ]
Choosing to participate in a study is an important personal decision. Talk with your doctor and family members or friends about deciding to join a study. To learn more about this study, you or your doctor may contact the study research staff using the contacts provided below. For general information, Learn About Clinical Studies.
|Ages Eligible for Study:
|18 Years to 75 Years (Adult, Older Adult)
|Sexes Eligible for Study:
|Accepts Healthy Volunteers:
- Histologically confirmed esophageal carcinoma
Meets the following criteria:
Resectable, locally advanced disease as determined by the combination of CT scan, endoluminal ultrasound (EUS), PET scan, and a multidisciplinary team discussion
T2, N1-3; T3, any N; or T4a, any N (if technically resectable with curative intent [R0] as decided by a multidisciplinary team discussion)
- EUS-guided fine-needle aspiration (FNA) allowed, but determines nodal status only if positive FNA
- No T1, any N, M0; or T2, N0, M0; T4a (due to infiltration of the trachea-bronchial tree or organ involvement that cannot be operated on with curative intent [R0] as decided by a multidisciplinary team discussion); T4b; or distant metastasis (M1)
- Type I or II disease according to the Siewert classification
- Squamous cell carcinoma (including basaloid-squamous cell and adenosquamous carcinoma) or adenocarcinoma of the thoracic esophagus or the esophagogastric junction (from 5 cm below the entrance of the esophagus into the thorax to the gastric cardia)
- Patients with obstructive tumors are eligible (obstructive tumors will be considered as locally advanced tumors)
- No cervical esophageal carcinoma and tumors involving the first 5 cm of the thoracic esophagus
- No airway infiltration in case of tumors at or above the tracheal bifurcation
- No peritoneal carcinomatosis in case of adenocarcinomas infiltrating the gastric cardia (i.e., esophagogastric junction carcinoma Siewert type I or II)
- WHO performance status 0-1
- Neutrophil count ≥ 1.5 x 10^9/L
- Platelet count ≥ 100 x 10^9/L
- Creatinine clearance > 60 mL/min
- Bilirubin ≤ 1.0 times upper limit of normal (ULN)
- Alkaline phosphatase ≤ 2.5 times ULN
- AST ≤ 1.5 times ULN
- INR normal
- PTT ≤ 1.0 times ULN
- Not pregnant or nursing
- Negative pregnancy test
- Fertile patients must use effective contraception during and for 12 months after completion of study therapy
- FEV_1 ≥ 1.5 L OR ≥ 75% of the reference value
- Must be compliant and geographically proximal for staging and follow-up
- Considered operable (i.e., appropriate organ functions and ability to undergo general anesthesia)
- No other malignancies within the past 5 years except nonmelanomatous skin cancer or adequately treated carcinoma in situ of the cervix
No severe or uncontrolled cardiovascular disease, including any of the following:
- NYHA class III-IV congestive heart failure
- Unstable angina pectoris
- Myocardial infarction within the past 12 months
- Significant arrhythmias
- No psychiatric disorder precluding understanding of information on trial related topics, giving informed consent, and answering questionnaires
- No active uncontrolled infection
- No serious underlying medical condition that, in the opinion of the investigator, could impair the ability of the patient to participate in the trial (e.g., uncontrolled diabetes mellitus or active autoimmune disease)
- No preexisting peripheral neuropathy > grade 1
- No definite contraindications for the use of corticosteroids and antihistamines as premedication
- No known hypersensitivity to trial drugs or hypersensitivity to any other component of the trial drugs
- No prior chemotherapy or radiotherapy to the chest
- At least 30 days since prior treatment in another clinical trial
- No concurrent drugs contraindicated for use with the trial drugs
- No other concurrent anticancer treatments
- No other concurrent experimental drugs or investigational treatments
To learn more about this study, you or your doctor may contact the study research staff using the contact information provided by the sponsor.
Please refer to this study by its ClinicalTrials.gov identifier (NCT number): NCT01107639
Show 57 Study Locations
|Study Chair:
|Thomas Ruhstaller, MD
|Cantonal Hospital of St. Gallen
|Study Chair:
|Michael Stahl, MD
|Kliniken Essen-Mitte
Publications of Results:
|Responsible Party:
|Swiss Group for Clinical Cancer Research
|ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier:
|NCT01107639 History of Changes
|Other Study ID Numbers:
2009-016584-10 ( EudraCT Number )
|First Posted:
|April 21, 2010 Key Record Dates
|Last Update Posted:
|May 15, 2019
|Last Verified:
|May 2019
|Individual Participant Data (IPD) Sharing Statement:
|Plan to Share IPD:
|Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated Drug Product:
|Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated Device Product:
Keywords provided by Swiss Group for Clinical Cancer Research:
stage IIB esophageal cancer
adenocarcinoma of the esophagus
adenocarcinoma of the gastroesophageal junction
squamous cell carcinoma of the esophagus
stage IIIA esophageal cancer
stage IIIB esophageal cancer
stage IIIC esophageal cancer
Additional relevant MeSH terms:
Esophageal Neoplasms
Neoplasms, Glandular and Epithelial
Neoplasms by Histologic Type
Gastrointestinal Neoplasms
Digestive System Neoplasms
Neoplasms by Site
Head and Neck Neoplasms
Digestive System Diseases
Esophageal Diseases
Gastrointestinal Diseases
Antineoplastic Agents
Tubulin Modulators
Antimitotic Agents
Mitosis Modulators
Molecular Mechanisms of Pharmacological Action
Antineoplastic Agents, Immunological


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From NBA.com staff reports
No matter what team Dwight Howard chooses on July 10th (as reports indicate that is when he'll reveal his pick), the Houston Rockets have to know they did all they could on July 1 to put their best foot forward.
The Rockets began their presentation to Howard last night/this morning (depending on your time zone), which started with a meeting at 9:01 p.m. PT. According to reports, the Rockets' contingent traveled to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in a Mercedes luxury van where they met with Howard to begin making a formal pitch to him.
Houston also brought in several key decision-makers to the process (we understand now why the needed a van!), including owner Leslie Alexander, coach Kevin McHale, president Tad Brown, GM Daryl Morey, vice president and athletic trainer Keith Jones and executive vice president Gersson Rosas.
Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle has details on the meeting, which included video messages from ex-Rockets Dikembe Mutombo and Yao Ming and Hall of Famers Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler being face-to-face with Howard in the meeting as well:
They prepared information about the marketing potential that comes with playing for the Rockets, still wildly popular in China with its enormous and avid fan base. They were ready to present information about living and playing in Houston, about their new basketball facilities and the camaraderie and chemistry they believe they have with their players, past and present.
There were books and an Ipad with much of the information presented to be left with Howard and his representatives, along with video testimonials from, among others, Yao Ming and Dikembe Mutombo.
But the Rockets hoped their greatest advantage would be their potential to become contenders by adding Howard in the middle.
Howard has repeatedly insisted his primary objective in free agency is to find the team with the best championship potential. Considering themselves to be in the strongest position in that measure, the Rockets sought to make their case they also would be positioned to make improvements even after signing a second player to a max contract.
The youngest team in the NBA last season, the Rockets were prepared to argue they would keep their young core untouched and would have the salary-cap exceptions and first-round picks in coming seasons. The youth was expected to be a point of emphasis. James Harden will be 24 next season, Chandler Parsons 25.
Harden and Parsons, their best player and team captain, respectively, have become friends with Howard and were part of the presentation.
Hall of Famers Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon traveled from around the world for the meeting. Drexler flew in from Taiwan, arriving after a 13-hour flight Sunday afternoon. Olajuwon traveled from Jordan for the meeting. (His appearance at the NBA draft in Brooklyn on Thursday was added to his itinerary after the Rockets let the NBA know they were flying him in.)
Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo!Sports says the Rockets are in the lead now for Howard's services after last night's meeting focused on the championship-level team Howard would be a part of should he come to Houston:
The Houston Rockets' dinner presentation to free-agent center Dwight Howard at the Hotel Bel-Air centered on the franchise's championship history and an infrastructure designed to give Howard a chance at multiple titles, sources with knowledge of the meeting told Yahoo! Sports.
Houston has emerged as the frontrunner to sign the Los Angeles Lakers center, league sources said, and those close to Howard confirmed late Sunday that the Rockets did nothing to dampen Howard's enthusiasm for the possibilities of playing for Houston.
"Hakeem didn't say much, but what did he say was very impactful," one source in the room told Yahoo! Sports. Olajuwon talked about the Rockets as a destination for championships and drew upon his own personal relationship with Howard, sources said.
Rockets stars James Harden and Chandler Parsons pitched Howard about how they wanted him as a teammate, how the chemistry of the locker room would welcome him. Without bringing up the Los Angeles Lakers, the Rockets could sell two things that the Lakers likely can't: a chance for a close connection with the franchise's star players; and an immediate chance to be a championship contender.
"His main focus was winning and we will give him the best opportunity to do that," Parsons told Yahoo! Sports' Marc Spears.
Howard was flanked with his agent, Dan Fegan, and Happy Walters, the CEO of Relativity Media and an agent in the company. What those close to Howard had been saying privately for months was clearly apparent through the probing that Howard did himself with Rockets officials: Winning was his most important priority in the process, and most of the evening was spent discussing how the Rockets had a history of constructing themselves around iconic centers in pursuit of championships.
McHale made it clear to Howard that he planned to build his system around him, and that, ultimately, he would hold Howard accountable every day in the franchise's pursuit of a title. The Rockets had long believed that McHale, a Hall of Fame power forward, would be an immense asset in the recruitment of Howard. Howard had never had a head coach that could identify with him so well, who could literally look him in the eyes.
Agents talking to the Rockets about potential additions to the roster say they're searching for shooters and complementary players to surround Howard. "They're progressing on everything with Dwight in mind," one prominent agent said Sunday night. "They seem very confident."
After the meeting, things were pretty positive on the Rockets side as Morey tweeted out the following:
All that said, the Lakers weren't about to be trumped by a Western Conference rival at the stroke of midnight, either.
According to ESPNLosAngeles.com, Lakers GM Mitch Kupchak met with Howard before the Rockets' wooing of him began just after 12:01 a.m. ET:
The Los Angeles Lakers were assured they would get the last word when it came to Dwight Howard's free agency pitch process. Turns out they got the first word as well.
Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak met briefly with Howard face-to-face shortly after 12:01 a.m. ET Monday night when NBA free agency officially opened up, a league source told ESPNLosAngeles.com.
The details of the meeting between Howard ans Kupchak are unknown, but according to Alex Kennedy of HoopsWorld.com, it was a brief chat:
And there's this as well from Kennedy:
The Hawks and Warriors are up next to make their pitches to Howard today, and the Mavs and Lakers close things out on Tuesday. Who knows where Howard will end up, of course, but here's one important nugget (courtesy of Feigen) to keep in mind as this Howard-a-palooza rolls along:
With the lack of a state income tax in Texas, Howard would net more over four years with the Rockets or Mavericks than in the first four years of a contract with the Lakers.

subset: commoncrawl


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Drenched in Color: A Brave & Joyful Rental Transformation
Even as a renter, Doug Meyer is not afraid of color. His New York City apartment on the West Side has been painted wall to wall and floor to ceiling in the kind of bright hues most home dwellers would only dream of. The interior designer is not only bold but also restless.
Last summer with the help of his brother and design partner Gene Meyer, he dreamed up a way to add more color to his home using a truly inspired take on traditional wallpaper. His bold use of 21 colors (edited down from an original 61) as a renter, has me dreaming and scheming a way to add some punch to my home.
"...together they began papering over Doug's bedroom walls with colored sheets of 8½-by-11-inch paper, each digitally printed with one of 223 designs. "The idea was a riff on early wallpapers from the 1400s, which were actually small squares of paper printed with wood blocks," Gene explains."
• Read More: New York Magazine
• See More of Doug and Gene Meyer's Work: Doug & Gene Meyer
(Images: Floto + Warner | New York Magazine)


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This Month in Matador Athletics - May, 2011
April 30, 2011
Bob Vazquez, Assistant Athletic Director for Media Relations, offers his monthly insights on the accomplishments of the teams, coaches and student-athletes who compete for Cal State Northridge ... The monthly report includes upcoming key games, and a report on what other activities are happening in the CSUN Athletic Department ... This month, Ashley Griffith (deaf student-athlete) and Kristy Burkey (interpreter) form a great friendship ... Congrats Don Strametz, Hall of Famer!!!
Ashley Griffith & Kristy Burkey - A FRIEND HELPING A FRIEND ...
Northridge, Calif. - It is indeed a small world. And fate happens everywhere.
Just ask Cal State Northridge track & field athlete Ashley Griffith and fellow teammate Kristy Burkey.
Griffiths' passion is track & field, but she was having a tough time last year as a freshman trying to become a better athlete in the high jump. Griffith has been deaf since birth and there wasn't anybody around to help her communicate with her coaches and her fellow athletes.
"I have always loved track & field," remarked Griffith. "But it was hard at the start of the year because there was no one available to help interpret during practice. But I was able to text the coaches and I was able to read lips."
Enter Kristy Burkey, a distance runner on the Matador track & field team. Burkey is a deaf studies major at Cal State Northridge who aspires to become an interpreter for deaf people. Although a sophomore, Burkey has become rather fluent in sign language for several years. Last year, the CSUN coaching staff and team members suggested Burkey meet Griffith to see if she could help Griffith during team meetings, at daily practices and during the track & field season that lasts several months starting in January.
"With Kristy's knowledge of sign language, she has really helped in the day-to-day operations of the track & field program," said Don Strametz, CSUN's Director of Track & Field, "At team meetings and at meets, Kristy is able to help interpret for Ashley. It's been a great situation for the both of them. Both of them have learned from each other. They are great friends."
Strametz first noticed the athletic talents of Griffith during a California high school state meet several years ago. Griffith decided on attending Cal State Northridge because of the deaf students program.
"Ashley is a person who is driven to achieve high goals," said Strametz. "It's been a challenge because she hasn't always had an interpreter to help her (during practice, team meetings and at track & field meets), especially with the type of technical language that coaches use in the sport (high jump). But it's a testimony to her because she continues to make good progress in order to fulfill her dreams. She's been a great addition to the team."
Griffiths' passion for track & field started in the sixth grade and has continued to grow each year. "In the eighth grade, I started to really get excited about the sport and with the opportunity to join the team," said Griffith. `That excitement has continued to grow."
Griffith's story is strikingly similar to that of CSUN basketball player Michael Lizarraga, who like Griffith, was born deaf, grew up the Sacramento area, attended the California School for the Deaf in the Bay Area and continued both their education and athletic careers at Cal State Northridge. Lizarraga fulfilled his dream to play college basketball (2007-11) at CSUN. Griffith, a sophomore, is now realizing her dream competing as a high jumper for the five-time defending Big West Conference championship women's track & field team. Griffith and Lizarraga each have sisters who are deaf.
"Michael is an inspiration," said Griffith, who has attended several Matador basketball games. "When people told him he couldn't do it, he proved them wrong. He never gave up. Michael's participation in basketball proved to everybody that you can do it. He is an inspiration to help me continue my dream as a track & field athlete."
Despite her inability to hear, Griffith has competed in the sprint running events and the sprint relays in addition to the high jump and the long jump at Cal State Northridge. Although deaf, somehow Griffith has been able to hear a faint "pop" sound from the starters gun at the beginning of the race. In high school, Griffith competed in the hurdles, the long jump and the sprints (200 and 400 meters).
"People have never really said no you can't compete, but they often ask me `how can you compete if you can't hear?,'" said Griffith. "I tell them I can compete. I am not going to give up."
Griffith, a kinesiology major, has two more years of collegiate eligibility after this season and she intends to improve each year. "The high jump is really challenging," admits Griffith, who also keeps busy by being a member of the deaf sorority Alpha Sigma Theta and as a member of the Deaf CSUNIANS. "The techniques are really hard. But you just need to keep working hard to get higher and higher over the bar."
Burkey and Griffith have became great friends. Burkey helps Griffith and vice versa.
"Give credit to Ashley," said Burkey, who in addition to her skills as a distance runner and a student is also a mentor and tutor for both Griffith and Lizarraga. "Ashley has really helped me develop my sign language skills. In team meetings, if I need help, Ashley will offer her advice. Plus, Ashley is another friend I have on the track & field team. Whenever Ashley and I get together, I introduce her to other people in hopes they can develop their sign language skills."
Ashley's Analysis/Kristy's Korner
Ashley Griffith, in additon to competing in track & field in high school at the California School for the Deaf in Fremont (Ca), also competed in volleyball and basketball ... Griffith captured the bronze medal in the high jump at the 2005 Deaf Olympics in Melbourne, Australia ... Her favorites include the television show "The Family Guy", sushi and all kinds of movies ... Kristy Burkey hails from Temecula, Calif. where she competed in cross country and track at Linfield Christian HS ... Her favorites include actors James Franco and Jennifer Aniston, the television show "Friends" and the movie "Grease".
A little more than three weeks ago, Cal State Northridge head track & field coach Don Strametz received a phone call from a close friend, Doug Todd, the relays director at the prestigious Mt. SAC Relays.
"Don, how would you like to be a new member of the Mt. SAC Relays Hall of Fame?," Todd asked Strametz.
"It was awesome, absoutely awesome to hear the news," said Strametz, who nearly fell out of his chair with excitement.
The Mt. SAC Relays inaugrated its Hall of Fame in 1975 to honor athletes, coaches, and friends who have made significant contributions both to the Relays and to the sport of track & field. The list of inductees includes athletes, coaches and administrators who have been a part of Olympic and world titles, world and American records, NCAA and U.S. national championships, and other notable international victories. The list of Hall of Famers includes such track & field greats as Ralph Boston, Willie Davenport, Tommie Smith, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Willie Banks, Bill Toomey, Francie Larrieu, Al Oerter and Evelyn Ashford.
The distinguished list now includes Don Strametz, who will be retiring at the end of the school year after 31 years of success at Cal State Northridge. "The Hall of Fame banquet was indeed a very special night," smiled Strametz. "It was at an event where I saw so many great track & field friends I have known for more than 40 years. I thought I would never be in that company (Hall of Fame member), and to be there along with so many former Olympians was a night that was unbeliveable."
Strametz was honored along with three other inductees and the world famous Santa Monica Track Club. The 2011 Hall of Fame inductees, in addition to Strametz and the SMTC, included former UCLA head coach and Cal State Northridge All-American athlete Art Venegas, Dr. Ernie Gregoire (2000 U.S. Olympic coach and a pioneer in coaching youth girls track & field) and long time announcer and track & field expert Scott Davis.
The banquet also honored the 50th anniversary of the 1960 United States Olympic track & field team that honed its skills at the Mt. SAC Relays before embarking on the long trip to the Olympics in Rome, Italy.
"The 1960 Mt. SAC Relays served as a preview meet for the U.S. Olympic team," said Strametz, who also remembered that during the meet, the U.S. Olympic team set three world records and several American records. "It was one of the all-time great meets ever on the old dirt track. The two sons of Hilmer Lodge (the founder of the Mt. SAC Relays) presented an award in honor of that team and their accomplishments during that meet."
Seven athletes from the 1960 U.S. Olympic team were at the Hall of Fame banquet. The seven athletes included former world record holder in the long jump, Ralph Boston and gold medalist Rafer Johnson.
"I was 15-years-old when all these great American athletes were in their prime," said Strametz. "The Olympians on the 1960 U.S. team were an inspiration reading about their success. They were my heroes. To see my idols after all these years, priceless."
Strametz and the other 2011 inductees were also saluted during a brief ceremony at this year's Mt. SAC Relays.
Matador Minute ...
Check out golfweek.com for a recent article regarding former Matador golfer Beth Allen (2000-04) ... Allen, who is considered the greatest women's golfer in CSUN history according to head coach Bonnie Murphy, gave one of her kidneys to her brother through a transplant on March 1 ... Her sacrifice for her younger brother, Dan, kicked off National Kidney Month ... Allen gained all-league honors for three straight seasons at CSUN and has played on the LPGA, European and Austrailian tours ... FYI, the waiting list for kidneys numbers around 78,000 ... Around 17,000 transplants are performed each year with around 7,000 from living donors.
See you in June ...


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Boards & Commissions
Historic Preservation Commission
Historic Preservation Commission Rules & Procedures
- Approved 8-5-80
- Amended 12-18-84
- Amended 12-17-85
- Amended June 1992
- Amended Oct 1998
Rule 1. Filing of Application
Applications for change of zones related to the designation of a Landmark or Landmark District shall be filed on or before noon of the fourth Friday preceding the Historic Preservation Commission meeting.
Applications for certificate for certain work on Landmarks or in Landmark Districts shall be filed on or before noon of the third Friday preceding the Preservation Commission meeting.
Rule 2. Notice
Legal notice of all matters to come before the Preservation Commission requiring such legal notice shall be given as required by law. In addition, the Preservation Commission will endeavor to give notice to agencies or organizations with interest in the Historic Preservation Commission at least eight (8) days before the date of the public hearing on matters that may be of interest to them and to inform the public through the news media.
The Preservation Commission will meet regularly on the 3rd Thursday of each month.
The following chart shows the usual scheduling of public hearings and action by the Preservation Commission for various matters:
|Type of
|Action by Commission
|Change of Zone (Landmark)
|1st meeting
|2nd meeting
|Change of Zone (Landmark District)
|1st meeting
|2nd meeting
|Certificate for work on Landmark or in Landmark District not involving demolition or substantial new construction
|1st meeting
|2nd meeting
|Certificate for work on Landmark or in Landmark District not involving demolition or substantial new construction (when a complete application is received and mailed to the Commission with a staff report in advance of the meeting)
|1st meeting
|1st meeting
|Special Permit
|1st meeting
|2nd meeting
The Preservation Commission shall begin its meetings in a place open to the public in the County-City Building. Other public meetings shall be held as designated by the Preservation Commission. Public hearings will be held first on the agenda and then the Preservation Commission shall vote on those items which can be acted upon as noted above.
Rule 3. Agenda
An agenda of the matters to come before the Preservation Commission will be prepared by the Planning Director and mailed to all Preservation Commission members and known interested parties on the Friday prior to the public hearing. Items not on the agenda will not be heard by the Commission unless by 4 votes of the Preservation Commission, it determines that an emergency exists and that the public interest dictates that the matter be heard.
There will be an addendum listing items that may be pending; as a result of a referral by City Council or Planning Commission, items postponed from previous meetings, or requests by the Commission for action, but not yet on the agenda.
The matters shall be heard in the order that the items appear on the agenda.
Rule 4. Nature of Testimony
The role and function of the Preservation Commission is to advise the Planning Commission and legislative and administrative branches of government concerning historic preservation matters. Testimony before the Preservation Commission should be relative to the historic preservation aspects of the matter being heard. A written statement supporting the requested applications or in opposition to the requested applications may be submitted to the Commission at the public hearing or accompany the application when filed. The written statement need not be read to the Commission as a part of the public hearing in order to be included as a part of the public hearing minutes.
A copy of Rules 4. 5 and 6 should be distributed to each applicant to appear before the Preservation Commission at the time of the filing of the application with the City of Lincoln.
The Preservation Commission may ask questions of the person testifying. There shall however, be no cross-examination or direct questioning in front of the Preservation Commission between proponents and opponents.
Material and testimony submitted should be as factual.
Rule 5. Presentation of Testimony
All those testifying shall first state their names and addresses.
The applicant or the applicant's representative will be requested to present his/her testimony first. If the party appearing is a representative, the representative shall state the nature of his/her representative capacity. The application or representative shall present his/her case as succinctly as possible and should state:
- Why the applicant desires the action requested.
- Why the application is justified under the Historic Preservation District Ordinance, Chapter 27.57 of the Lincoln Municipal Code.
- The applicant or the applicant's representative, will be entitled to a brief rebuttal after the opponent's testimony is concluded.
Those in favor of or opposed to the application shall then be called upon to present their testimony. Each individual should present his/her reasons why the application is or is not in accordance with sound planning practices.
Fifteen (15) minutes for testimony is preferred as a maximum; however, no more than 30 minutes should be taken by either proponents or opponents. The Chair may grant additional time in advance of the meeting for items of major significance. Speakers may request more time and the Preservation Commission may either grant or deny such requests.
It is requested that large groups in attendance concerned with an application chose one or two spokesmen to present the group's testimony.
It should be recognized, however, that the Commission is interested in only factual information and not in popularity contests.
Speakers should not present repetitious testimony. The Chair of the Preservation Commission shall reserve the right to discontinue at any time during repetitions or non-related testimony.
A sign in sheet may be circulated in order that persons in attendance may indicate their desire to testify or merely indicate their position on an application.
Rule 6. Withdrawal or Deferral
Any matter which has been advertised for public hearing may be withdrawn or deferred prior to preparation of the agenda on the Thursday before the Preservation Commission meeting. Once the agenda has been prepared, items may be withdrawn with approval of the Chairperson or Vice-Chairperson if the Chairperson is out of town or unavailable.
If applicants' request deferrals after the property has been posted, then such deferral shall be for a period of at least 60 days. The time period may be waived for good cause, shown in writing to the Planning Department prior to the Preservation Commission meeting at which the applicant wishes to submit the matter.
Rule 7. Final Action
As required by the Lincoln Municipal Code, four affirmative voters are required for final action on any matter. "Final Action" shall be defined to mean any vote on a main motion which results in a favorable or unfavorable disposition of an agenda matter. All subsidiary votes and procedural votes, such as amendments, additions and /or deletions; may be determined by the majority vote of the quorum present at any meeting.
A vote on final action on a matter not receiving four or more votes either for or against said matter shall be deemed to have received neither approval nor disapproval and shall, without further order of the Preservation Commission, be continued from regular meeting to regular meeting and voted upon once at each such meeting until such time as it shall receive four votes either for or against.
Rule 8. Special Meetings
Special meetings of the Commission may be called by the Chairperson, Vice-Chairperson or three (3) members of the Preservation Commission.
Rule 9. Suspension of Rules
Any and all rules may be suspended by four affirmative votes of the Preservation Commission.
Rule 10. Amendment of Rules
These rules may be amended by four affirmative votes of the Preservation Commission.
Rule 11. Election of Vice-Chairperson
The Preservation Commission shall elect a Vice-Chairperson for a one-year term.


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Sorry if im posting this in the wrong forum or even the wrong message boards (i couldnt seem to find a message board for the goodies project). im trying to install the Volstatus Icon from the xfce goodies project, and im having problems. I do the ./configure and everything seems to go fine, but when i issue the make command it exits with an error code, something like:
"/usr/lib/libhal-storage.la: no such file or directory"
Im pretty sure im getting this error because i dont have all the required libraries installed. Of course im a bit of a newbie to Linux so the list posted on the website is like greek to me. Here's the list:
gtk 2.10.0 - I have this one installed already.
libxfce4util 4.4.0 - i think this one is libxfce4util4 right?
libxfcegui4 4.4.0 - i think this one is libxfcegui4 right?
dbus-glib 0.70 - is this on libdbus-glib-1-dev?
hal-storage 0.5.7.1 - is this hal-storage1?
exo-hal 0.3.2 (compiled with HAL support) - I have no clue what this library is or where to get it, and what does "compiled with HAL support" mean?
a running system tray (e.g., systray plugin in xfce4-panel) - does this mean i just have to have a system tray running on a panel somewhere? or do i have to download some other plugin first?
ok, after doing some checking, im now convinced that my libraries are in order, which makes me wonder just what exactly the problem is.
why would i be missing this /usr/lib/libhal-storage.la file? and how do i fix it?
found the solution. I did a fresh install of Ubuntu and did "sudo apt-get install libexo-0.3-dev" before i ran the gui installer to install xfce4.4.1, after Xfce was reinstalled, the make ran with no problems.
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Mmmmm! Coffee!
How to make coffee at 5 AM.
There's nothing quite as nice as fresh, hot coffee on an early morning commute. Here's how it's made.
First, locate the kitchen. It's a large room equipped with a refrigerator, stove, sink, microwave, and a whole lot of gadgets that serve no known function. Somewhere in that room there should be a lightswitch. Turn it on.
Locate the tea kettle, a large closed vessel meant for boiling water. Put fresh water inside it from the sink, then place the tea kettle atop the stove. Turn on the burner, being careful to see that it's really burning and not merely filling the room with natural gas. Ignoring this step can lead to a powerful explosion or slow asphyxiation. If something smells funny and it's not you, double check to see that the burner is truly on.
While the water heats, get an insulated water bottle from the cupboard. Place it on the countertop next to the stove. Be sure the open end of the bottle is facing up.
Find the Melitta one-cup drip coffee maker. It may be in the cupboard next to the coffee cups or it may be in the dishwasher. Place it on top of the water bottle which should still be sitting on the countertop with the open end facing up.
Find the No.2 coffee filters in the cupboard next to the stove. It says No.2 on the box. There are some No.4 filters in there too, but they're reserved for an advanced lesson in coffee making.
Put the filter in the drip coffee maker.
Find the coffee. It may be beans or it may already be ground. If it's ground, add 2 teaspoons to the filter. That's 2 teaspoons of coffee, not 2 teaspoons from the drawer.
If only coffee beans are available, add about 3 teaspoons to the coffee grinder. They'll be more compact once they've been ground. Turn the grinder on and after the beans are finished, put the coffee in the Melitta filter.
When the water is almost boiling, pour it over the coffee in the filter. Be sure the Melitta device is still sitting atop the water bottle and that the water bottle has its open end facing up. Add just a little bit of water at first in order to settle the grounds. Once they're saturated, add the rest of the water.
This is sometimes a tricky judgment call. If you add too much water, the bottle overfills and it slops over the side onto the counter top. One way to prevent a mess is to put a saucer under the bottle. If you add too little water, however, the coffee will be very strong and roughly the same viscosity as used motor oil.
After the water finishes dripping through the Melitta device, remove the coffee maker from atop the water bottle. Dump the filter and grounds into the trash and place the coffee maker in the sink.
Add sugar and creamer to taste - in the coffee - not in the sink. Place the bottle into its holder on the bike and prepare to leave the house. One on the street, promptly fumble the bottle, spilling the very hot contents down onto your jersey and legs. Stop and use some colorful language to express your dismay before turning around for a change of clothing.
At this point, you should be fully awake.
Labels: humor


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Universe, the whole cosmic system of matter and energy of which Earth, and therefore the human race, is a part. Humanity has traveled a long road since societies imagined Earth, the Sun, and the Moon as the main objects of creation, with the rest of the universe being formed almost as an afterthought. Today it is known that Earth is only a small ball of rock in a space of unimaginable vastness and that the birth of the solar system was probably only one event among many that occurred against the backdrop of an already mature universe. This humbling lesson has unveiled a remarkable fact, one that endows the minutest particle in the universe with a rich and noble heritage: events that occurred in the first few minutes of the creation of the universe 13.7 billion years ago turn out to have had a profound influence on the birth, life, and death of galaxies, stars, and planets. Indeed, a line can be drawn from the forging of the matter of the universe in a primal "big bang" to the gathering on Earth of atoms versatile enough to serve as the basis of life. The intrinsic harmony of such a worldview has great philosophical and aesthetic appeal, and it may explain why public interest in the universe has always endured.
This article traces the development over time of humanity's perception of the universe, from prehistoric observations of the night sky to modern calculations on the recessional velocity of galaxies. For articles on component parts of the universe, see solar system, star, galaxy, and nebula. For an explanation of the scientific study of the universe as a unified whole, see cosmology. For an article about the possible existence of other universes, see multiverse.
Earliest conceptions of the universe
All scientific thinking on the nature of the universe can be traced to the distinctive geometric patterns formed by the stars in the night sky. Even prehistoric people must have noticed that, apart from a daily rotation (which is now understood to arise from the spin of Earth), the stars did not seem to move with respect to one another: the stars appear "fixed." Early nomads found that knowledge of the constellations could guide their travels, and they developed stories to help them remember the relative positions of the stars in the night sky. These stories became the mythical tales that are part of most cultures.
When nomads turned to farming, an intimate knowledge of the constellations served a new function—an aid in timekeeping, in particular for keeping track of the seasons. People had noticed very early that certain celestial objects did not remain stationary relative to the "fixed" stars; instead, during the course of a year, they moved forward and backward in a narrow strip of the sky that contained 12 constellations constituting the signs of the zodiac. Seven such wanderers were known to the ancients: the Sun, the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. Foremost among the wanderers was the Sun: day and night came with its rising and setting, and its motion through the zodiac signaled the season to plant and the season to reap. Next in importance was the Moon: its position correlated with the tides, and its shape changed intriguingly over the course of a month. The Sun and Moon had the power of gods; why not then the other wanderers? Thus probably arose the astrological belief that the positions of the planets (from the Greek word planetes, "wanderers") in the zodiac could influence worldly events and even cause the rise and fall of kings. In homage to this belief, Babylonian priests devised the week of seven days, whose names even in various modern languages (for example, English, French, or Norwegian) can still easily be traced to their origins in the seven planet-gods.
Astronomical theories of the ancient Greeks
The apex in the description of planetary motions during classical antiquity was reached with the Greeks, who were of course superb geometers. Like their predecessors, Greek astronomers adopted the natural picture, from the point of view of an observer on Earth, that Earth lay motionless at the centre of a rigidly rotating celestial sphere (to which the stars were "fixed"), and that the complex to-and-fro wanderings of the planets in the zodiac were to be described against this unchanging backdrop. They developed an epicyclic model that would reproduce the observed planetary motions with quite astonishing accuracy. The model invoked small circles on top of large circles, all rotating at individual uniform speeds, and it culminated about 140 ce with the work of Ptolemy, who introduced the ingenious artifact of displaced centres for the circles to improve the empirical fit. Although the model was purely kinematic and did not attempt to address the dynamical reasons for why the motions were as they were, it laid the groundwork for the paradigm that nature is not capricious but possesses a regularity and precision that can be discovered from experience and used to predict future events.
The application of the methods of Euclidean geometry to planetary astronomy by the Greeks led to other schools of thought as well. Pythagoras (c. 570–c. 490 bce), for example, argued that the world could be understood on rational principles ("all things are numbers"); that it was made of four elements—earth, water, air, and fire; that Earth was a sphere; and that the Moon shone by reflected light. In the 4th century bce Heracleides Ponticus, a follower of Pythagoras, taught that the spherical Earth rotated freely in space and that Mercury and Venus revolved about the Sun. From the different lengths of shadows cast in Syene and Alexandria at noon on the first day of summer, Eratosthenes (c. 276–194 bce) computed the radius of Earth to an accuracy within 20 percent of the modern value. Starting with the size of Earth's shadow cast on the Moon during a lunar eclipse, Aristarchus of Samos (c. 310–230 bce) calculated the linear size of the Moon relative to Earth. From its measured angular size, he then obtained the distance to the Moon. He also proposed a clever scheme to measure the size and distance of the Sun. Although flawed, the method did enable him to deduce that the Sun is much larger than Earth. This deduction led Aristarchus to speculate that Earth revolves about the Sun rather than the other way around.
Unfortunately, except for the conception that Earth is a sphere (inferred from Earth's shadow on the Moon always being circular during a lunar eclipse), these ideas failed to gain general acceptance. The precise reasons remain unclear, but the growing separation between the empirical and aesthetic branches of learning must have played a major role. The unparalleled numerical accuracy achieved by the theory of epicyclic motions for planetary motions lent great empirical validity to the Ptolemaic system. Henceforth, such computational matters could be left to practical astronomers without the necessity of having to ascertain the physical reality of the model. Instead, absolute truth was to be sought through the Platonic ideal of pure thought. Even the Pythagoreans fell into this trap; the depths to which they eventually sank may be judged from the story that they discovered and then tried to conceal the fact that the square root of 2 is an irrational number (i.e., cannot be expressed as a ratio of two integers).
The system of Aristotle and its impact on medieval thought
The systematic application of pure reason to the explanation of natural phenomena reached its extreme development with Aristotle (384–322 bce), whose great system of the world later came to be regarded as the synthesis of all worthwhile knowledge. Aristotle argued that humans could not inhabit a moving and rotating Earth without violating common sense perceptions. Moreover, in his theory of impetus, all terrestrial motion, presumably including that of Earth itself, would grind to a halt without the continued application of force. He took for granted the action of friction because he would not allow the seminal idealization of a body moving through a void ("nature abhors a vacuum"). Thus, Aristotle was misled into equating force with velocity rather than, as Sir Isaac Newton was to show much later, with (mass times) acceleration. Celestial objects were exempt from dynamical decay because they moved in a higher stratum whereby a perfect sphere was the natural shape of heavenly bodies and uniform rotation in circles was the natural state of their motion. Indeed, primary motion was derived from the outermost sphere, the seat of the unchangeable stars and of divine power. No further explanation was needed beyond the aesthetic one. In this scheme, the imperfect motion of comets had to be postulated as meteorological phenomena that took place within the imperfect atmosphere of Earth.
The great merit of Aristotle's system was its internal logic, a grand attempt to unify all branches of human knowledge within the scope of a single self-consistent and comprehensive theory. Its great weakness was that its rigid arguments rested almost entirely on aesthetic grounds; it lacked a mechanism by which empirical knowledge gained from experimentation or observation could be used to test, modify, or reject the fundamental principles underlying the theory. Aristotle's system had the underlying philosophical drive of modern science without its flexible procedure of self-correction that allows the truth to be approached in a series of successive approximations.
With the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 ce, much of what was known to the Greeks was lost or forgotten—at least to Western civilizations. (Hindu astronomers still taught that Earth was a sphere and that it rotated once daily.) The Aristotelian system, however, resonated with the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church during the Middle Ages, especially in the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, and later, during the period of the Counter-Reformation in the 16th and early 17th century, it ascended to the status of religious dogma. Thus did the notion of an Earth-centred universe become gradually enmeshed in the politics of religion. Also welcome in an age that insisted on a literal interpretation of the Scriptures was Aristotle's view that the living species of Earth were fixed for all time. What was not accepted was Aristotle's argument on logical grounds that the world was eternal, extending infinitely into the past and the future even though it had finite spatial extent. For the church, there was definitely a creation event, and infinity was reserved for God, not space or time.
The Copernican revolution
The Renaissance brought a fresh spirit of inquiry to the arts and sciences. Explorers and travelers brought home the vestiges of classical knowledge that had been preserved in the Muslim world and the East, and in the 15th century Aristarchus' heliocentric hypothesis again came to be debated in certain educated circles. The boldest step was taken by the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, who hesitated for so long in publication that he did not see a printed copy of his own work until he lay on his deathbed in 1543. Copernicus recognized more profoundly than anyone else the advantages of a Sun-centred planetary system. By adopting the view that Earth circled the Sun, he could qualitatively explain the to-and-fro wanderings of the planets much more simply than Ptolemy. For example, at certain times in the motions of Earth and Mars about the Sun, Earth would catch up with Mars's projected motion, and then that planet would appear to go backward through the zodiac. Unfortunately in his Sun-centred system, Copernicus continued to adhere to the established tradition of using uniform circular motion, and if he adopted only one large circle for the orbit of each planet, his calculated planetary positions would in fact be quantitatively poorer in comparison with the observed positions of the planets than tables based on the Ptolemaic system. This defect could be partially corrected by providing additional smaller circles, but then much of the beauty and simplicity of Copernicus' original system would be lost. Moreover, though the Sun was now removed from the list of planets and Earth added, the Moon still needed to move around Earth.
It was Galileo who exploited the power of newly invented lenses to build a telescope that would accumulate indirect support for the Copernican viewpoint. Critics had no rational response to Galileo's discovery of the correlation of Venus' phases of illumination with its orbital position relative to the Sun, which required it to circle that body rather than Earth. Nor could they refute his discovery of the four brightest satellites of Jupiter (the so-called Galilean satellites), which demonstrated that planets could indeed possess moons. They could only refuse to look through the telescope or refuse to see what their own eyes told them.
Galileo also mounted a systematic attack on other accepted teachings of Aristotle by showing, for example, that the Sun was not perfect but had spots. Besieged on all sides by what it perceived as heretical stirrings, the church forced Galileo to recant his support of the heliocentric system in 1633. Confined to house arrest during his last years, Galileo would perform actual experiments and thought experiments (summarized in a treatise) that would refute the core of Aristotelian dynamics. Most notably, he formulated the concept that would eventually lead (in the hands of René Descartes) to the so-called first law of mechanics—namely, that a body in motion, freed from friction and from all other forces, would move, not in a circle, but in a straight line at uniform speed. The frame of reference for making such measurements was ultimately the "fixed stars." Galileo also argued that, in the gravitational field of Earth and in the absence of air drag, bodies of different weights would fall at the same rate. This finding would eventually lead (in the hands of Einstein) to the principle of equivalence, a cornerstone of the theory of general relativity.
It was the German astronomer Johannes Kepler, a contemporary of Galileo, who would provide the crucial blow that assured the success of the Copernican revolution. Of all the planets whose orbits Copernicus had tried to explain with a single circle, Mars had the largest departure (the largest eccentricity, in astronomical nomenclature); consequently, Kepler arranged to work with the foremost observational astronomer of his day, Tycho Brahe of Denmark, who had accumulated over many years the most precise positional measurements of this planet. When Kepler finally gained access to the data upon Tycho's death, he painstakingly tried to fit the observations to one curve after another. The work was especially difficult because he had to assume an orbit for Earth before he could self-consistently subtract the effects of its motion. Finally, after many close calls and rejections, he hit upon a simple, elegant solution—an ellipse with the Sun at one focus. The other planets also fell into place. This triumph was followed by others, notable among which was Kepler's discovery of his so-called three laws of planetary motion. The empirical victory secure, the stage was set for Newton's matchless theoretical campaigns.
Two towering achievements paved the way for Newton's conquest of the dynamical problem of planetary motions: his discoveries of the second law of mechanics and of the law of universal gravitation. The second law of mechanics generalized the work of Galileo and Descartes on terrestrial dynamics, asserting how bodies generally move when they are subjected to external forces. The law of universal gravitation generalized the work of Galileo and the English physicist Robert Hooke on terrestrial gravity, asserting that two massive bodies attract one another with a force directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of their separation distance. By pure mathematical deduction, Newton showed that these two general laws (whose empirical basis rested in the laboratory) implied, when applied to the celestial realm, Kepler's three laws of planetary motion. This brilliant coup completed the Copernican program to replace the old worldview with an alternative that was far superior, both in conceptual principle and in practical application. In the same stroke of genius, Newton unified the mechanics of heaven and Earth and initiated the era of modern science.
In formulating his laws, Newton asserted as postulates the notions of absolute space (in the sense of Euclidean geometry) and absolute time (a mathematical quantity that flows in the universe without reference to anything else). A kind of relativity principle did exist ("Galilean relativity") in the freedom to choose different inertial frames of reference—i.e., the form of Newton's laws was unaffected by motion at constant velocity with respect to the "fixed stars." However, Newton's scheme unambiguously sundered space and time as fundamentally separate entities. This step was necessary for progress to be made, and it was such a wonderfully accurate approximation to the truth for describing motions that are slow compared to the speed of light that it withstood all tests for more than two centuries.
In 1705 the English astronomer Edmond Halley used Newton's laws to predict that a certain comet last seen in 1682 would reappear 76 years later. When Halley's Comet returned on Christmas night 1758, many years after the deaths of both Newton and Halley, no educated person could ever again seriously doubt the power of mechanistic explanations for natural phenomena. Nor would anyone worry again that the unruly excursions of comets through the solar system would smash the crystalline spheres that earlier thinkers had mentally constructed to carry planets and the other celestial bodies through the heavens. The attention of professional astronomers now turned increasingly toward an understanding of the stars.
In the latter effort, the British astronomer William Herschel and his son John led the assault. The construction of ever more powerful reflecting telescopes allowed them during the late 1700s and early 1800s to measure the angular positions and apparent brightnesses of many faint stars. In an earlier epoch, Galileo had turned his telescope to the Milky Way and saw that it was composed of countless individual stars. Now the Herschels began an ambitious program to gauge quantitatively the distribution of the stars in the sky. On the assumption (first adopted by the Dutch mathematician and scientist Christiaan Huygens) that faintness is a statistical measure of distance, they inferred the enormous average separations of stars. This view received direct confirmation for the nearest stars through parallax measurements of their distances from Earth. Later, photographs taken over a period of many years also showed that some stars changed locations across the line of sight relative to the background; thus, astronomers learned that stars are not truly fixed, but rather have motions with respect to one another. These real motions—as well as the apparent ones due to parallax, first measured by the German astronomer Friedrich Bessel in 1838—were not detected by the ancients because of the enormous distance scale of the stellar universe.
Perceptions of the 20th century
Kapteyn's statistical studies
The statistical studies based on these new perceptions continued into the early 20th century. They culminated with the analysis by the Dutch astronomer Jacobus Cornelius Kapteyn who, like William Herschel before him, used number counts of stars to study their distribution in space. It can be shown for stars with an arbitrary but fixed mixture of intrinsic brightnesses that—in the absence of absorption of starlight—the number N of stars with apparent brightness, energy flux f, larger than a specified level f0, is given by N = Af0−3/2, where A is a constant, if the stars are distributed uniformly in Euclidean space (space satisfying the principles of Euclidean geometry). The number N would increase with decreasing limiting apparent brightness f0, because one is sampling, on average, larger volumes of space when one counts fainter sources. Kapteyn found that the number N increased less rapidly with decreasing f0 than the hypothetical value Af0−3/2; this indicated to him that the solar system lay near the centre of a distribution of stars, which thinned in number with increasing distance from the centre. Moreover, Kapteyn determined that the rate of thinning was more rapid in certain directions than in others. This observation, in conjunction with other arguments that set the scale, led him in the first two decades of the 20th century to depict the Milky Way Galaxy (then confused with the entire universe) as a rather small, flattened stratum of stars and gaseous nebulae in which the number of stars decreased to 10 percent of their central value at a distance in the plane of about 8,500 light-years from the galactic centre.
Shapley's contributions
In 1917 the American astronomer Harlow Shapley mounted a serious challenge to the Kapteyn universe. Shapley's study of the distances of globular clusters led him to conclude that their distribution centred on a point that lay in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius and at a distance that he estimated to be about 45,000 light-years (50 percent larger than the modern value). Shapley was able to determine the distance to the globulars through the calibration of the intrinsic brightnesses of some variable stars found in them. (Knowing the period of the light variations allowed Shapley to infer the average intrinsic brightness. A measurement of the average apparent brightness then allowed, from the 1/r2 law of brightness, a deduction of the distance r.) According to Shapley, the galactic system was much larger than Kapteyn's estimate. Moreover, the Sun was located not at its centre but rather at its radial outskirts (though close to the midplane of a flattened disk). Shapley's dethronement of the Sun from the centre of the stellar system has often been compared with Copernicus' dethronement of Earth from the centre of the planetary system, but its largest astronomical impact rested with the enormous physical dimensions ascribed to the Galaxy. In 1920 a debate was arranged between Shapley and Heber D. Curtis to discuss this issue before the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C.
The debate also addressed a second controversy—the nature of the so-called spiral nebulas. Shapley and his adherents held that these objects were made up of diffuse gas and were therefore similar to the other gas clouds known within the confines of the Milky Way Galaxy. Curtis and others, by contrast, maintained that the spirals consisted of stars and were thus equivalent to independent galaxies coequal to the Galaxy. A parallel line of thought had been proposed earlier by the philosophers Immanuel Kant and Thomas Wright and by William Herschel. The renewed argument over the status of the spirals grew in part out of an important development that occurred around the turn of the 20th century: the astronomical incorporation of the methods of spectroscopy both to study the physical nature of celestial bodies and to obtain the component of their velocities along the line of sight. By analyzing the properties of spectral lines in the received light (e.g., seeing if the lines were produced by absorption or emission and if the lines were broad or narrow), or by analyzing the gross colours of the observed object, astronomers learned to distinguish between ordinary stars and gaseous nebulas existing in the regions between stars. By measuring the displacement in wavelength of the spectral lines with respect to their laboratory counterparts and assuming the displacement to arise from the Doppler effect, they could deduce the velocity of recession (or approach). The spirals posed interpretative difficulties on all counts: they had spectral properties that were unlike either local collections of stars or gaseous nebulas (because of the unforeseen roles of dust and different populations of stars in the arms, disk, and central bulge of a spiral galaxy); and, as had been shown by the American astronomer Vesto Slipher, they generally possessed recession velocities that were enormous compared to those then known for any other astronomical object.
The formal debate between Shapley and Curtis ended inconclusively, but history has proved Shapley to be mostly right on the issue of the off-centre position of the solar system and the large scale of the Galaxy, and Curtis to be mostly right on the issue of the nature of the spirals as independent galaxies. As demonstrated in the work of the Swiss-born U.S. astronomer Robert J. Trumpler in 1930. Kapteyn (and Herschel) had been misled by the effects of the undiscovered but pervasive interstellar dust to think that the stars in the Milky Way thinned out with distance much more quickly than they actually do. The effect of interstellar dust was much less important for Shapley's studies because the globular clusters mostly lie well away from the plane of the Milky Way system.
Hubble's research on extragalactic systems
The decisive piece of evidence concerning the extragalactic nature of the spirals was provided in 1923–24 by Edwin Hubble, who succeeded in resolving one field in the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) into a collection of distinct stars. Some of the stars proved to be variables of a type similar to those found by Shapley in globular clusters. Measurements of the properties of these variables yielded estimates of their distances. As it turned out, the distance to M31 put it well outside the confines of even Shapley's huge model of the Galaxy, and M31 therefore must be an independent system of stars (and gas clouds).
Hubble's findings inaugurated the era of extragalactic astronomy. He himself went on to classify the morphological types of the different galaxies he found: spirals, ellipticals, and irregulars. In 1926 he showed that, apart from a "zone of avoidance" (region characterized by an apparent absence of galaxies near the plane of the Milky Way caused by the obscuration of interstellar dust), the distribution of galaxies in space is close to uniform when averaged over sufficiently large scales, with no observable boundary or edge. The procedure was identical to that used by Kapteyn and Herschel, with galaxies replacing stars as the luminous sources. The difference was that this time the number count N was proportional to f0-3/2, to the limits of the original survey. Hubble's finding provided the empirical justification for the so-called cosmological principle, a term coined by the English mathematician and astrophysicist Edward A. Milne to describe the assumption that at any instant in time the universe is, in the large, homogeneous and isotropic—i.e., statistically the same in every place and in every direction. This represented the ultimate triumph for the Copernican revolution.
It was also Hubble who interpreted and quantified Slipher's results on the large recessional velocities of galaxies—they correspond to a general overall expansion of the universe. The Hubble law, enunciated in 1929, marked a major turning point in modern thinking about the origin and evolution of the universe. The announcement of cosmological expansion came at a time when scientists were beginning to grapple with the theoretical implications of the revolutions taking place in physics. In his theory of special relativity, formulated in 1905, Einstein had effected a union of space and time, one that fundamentally modified Newtonian perceptions of dynamics, allowing, for example, transformations between mass and energy. In his theory of general relativity, proposed in 1916, Einstein effected an even more remarkable union, one that fundamentally altered Newtonian perceptions of gravitation, allowing gravitation to be seen, not as a force, but as the dynamics of space-time. Taken together, the discoveries of Hubble and Einstein gave rise to a new worldview. The new cosmology gave empirical validation to the notion of a creation event; it assigned a numerical estimate for when the arrow of time first took flight; and it eventually led to the breathtaking idea that everything in the universe could have arisen from literally nothing.
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time: Time in general relativity and cosmologyIn general relativity, which, though less firmly established than the special theory, is intended to explain gravitational phenomena, a more complicated metric of variable curvature is employed, which approximates to the Minkowski metric in empty space far from material bodies. Cosmologists who have based…
philosophy of religion: God and the universe…is now? Whatever may have been the influence of Classical philosophy on the Abrahamic religions, they have not, in general, accepted the Greek idea of the eternity of matter but have stressed the contingency of the universe as the free creation of God. It has been…
astronomy: Cosmology…the scientific study of the universe as a unified whole, from its earliest moments through its evolution to its ultimate fate. The currently accepted cosmological model is the big bang. In this picture, the expansion of the universe started in an intense explosion 13.8 billion years ago. In this primordial…
More About Universe19 references found in Britannica articles
Assorted References
- cosmology
- In cosmology
- exploration
- philosophy of religion
origin and evolution
- chemical elements
- cosmological theory
- life
structure and properties
- antimatter
- In antimatter
- dark energy
- In dark energy
- dark matter
- In dark matter


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And the Babe of the Week is…Morgan Caitlin!
You demanded, and it's our job to listen: Morgan is your pick for Babe of the Week!
The 23-year-old model and hockey enthusiast beat her 6 smokin' competitors with nearly 41% of the vote! She now moves on to fight for Babe of the Month. Does she have what it takes? Check out the pics below and tell us.
Here's the deal: At the end of the week, each Babe of the Day will compete for your votes and the winner will become Babe of the Week. Each week's winner will then face off to become Babe of the Month, and those winners will then duke it out for – you guessed it – the Babe of the Year title. Only those lucky ladies will be inducted into GuySpeed's Hall of Fame, an honor reserved for the hottest of babes.