The Nineties in America - Salem Press (2009)

the planets and comets of the solar system to remote
galaxies. An especially spectacular achievement oc-
curred in December, 1995, when the telescope was
pointed to a particular small area of sky over a period
of ten days, resulting in 342 exposures. Called the
Hubble Deep Field, this penetration into the uni-
verse recorded galaxies 10 to 12 billion light-years
away, during the universe’s infancy. The HST
showed a different universe, one made up of frag-
ments of galaxies that had not yet coalesced to form
giant spiral galaxies like the Milky Way.
Cosmology was advanced through the 1990’s by
these and similar HST discoveries, including the
demonstration that the quasars are actually galaxies
undergoing collisions that have led to the formation
of black holes in their centers. Black holes in the nu-
clei of nearby galaxies were also discovered using
HST velocity measurements, showing that black holes
are the explanation for a variety of puzzlingly active
galaxies, known but not understood for decades.

Impact The Hubble Space Telescope has had an
important impact on the world’s understanding of
the universe. The heyday of its discoveries occurred
in the years 1993-1999, when it revolutionized con-
cepts of cosmology and dramatically expanded
knowledge of the physics of stars, as well as the solar
system and other planetary systems.

Further Reading
Christensen, Lars Lindberg, and Bob Fosbury.Hub-
ble: Fifteen Years of Discover y. New York: Springer,

2006. A richly illustrated look at space through
      the HST.
      Petersen, Carolyn Collins, and John C. Brandt.Hub-
      ble Vision: Further Adventures with the Hubble Space
      Telescope. 2d ed. New York: Cambridge University
      Press, 1998. Offers a comprehensive discussion of
      the astronomical discoveries made possible by the
      HST. Includes attractive illustrations, glossary,
      bibliography, and index.
      Smith, Robert W.The Space Telescope: A Study of NASA,
      Science, Technology, and Politics. New York: Cam-
      bridge University Press, 1993. Provides a detailed
      chronological account of the construction of the
      HST from its inception to launch preparation.
      Voit, Mark.Hubble Space Telescope: New Views of the Uni-
      verse. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000. A clearly
      written book on the HST. Concise, but not com-
      prehensive.
      Paul Hodge

See also Astronomy; Hale-Bopp comet; Inventions;

Mars exploration; Science and technology; Shoe-

maker-Levy 9 comet; Space exploration; Space shut-

tle program.

 Human Genome Project

Identification International research project to

sequence the base pairs of DNA in the human

genome

Date Officially launched October 1, 1990

Knowledge of the sequence of all 3 billion base pairs of the

human genome will allow for a better understanding of the

function of genes in healthy human beings, the role genes

play in disease, the extent of genetic variation within the

human population, and the evolutionar y relationship hu-

mans have with each other and with other organisms.

The Human Genome Project (HGP) had its origins

in a 1984 Department of Energy (DOE) meeting,

when sequencing of the human genome was first dis-

cussed as a way for the DOE to meet its congressional

mandate to monitor and assess environmentally in-

duced genetic damage. In 1985, sequencing of the

human genome was seriously proposed by molecu-

lar biologist Robert Sinsheimer, then chancellor of

the University of California, Santa Cruz. In 1986,

Sydney Brenner, a molecular biologist at the Medi-

cal Research Council in Great Britain, and Renato

Dulbecco, a viral molecular biologist at the Salk In-

stitute in La Jolla, California, independently sug-

gested sequencing the human genome. All of these

suggestions came to fruition later in 1986 at the Cold

Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, when a seri-

ous proposal to sequence the human genome in a

multinational effort was developed. The National

Research Council (NRC) and Congress’s Office of

Technology Assessment soon became interested

and sponsored feasibility studies. A committee of the

NRC concluded in 1988 that sequencing the human

genome was both feasible and desirable.

Technological Developments Several technologi-

cal inventions and developments made the Human

Genome Project possible. These include the inven-

tion of the polymerase chain reaction (1985), the in-

vention and subsequent development of automatic

deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequencers (1986)

and their commercialization by Applied Biosystems,

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