What 100 years of studying other galaxies has told us about the cosmos

In his 1980 book The Restaurant At the End of the Universe, Douglas Adams imagined a torture device called the Total Perspective Vortex that would subject its victims to “just one momentary glimpse of the entire unimaginable infinity of creation”. The result? Instant death.

His invention was a send-up of the idea that contemplating the staggering vastness of the universe inevitably induces existential dread. But as we discover in our special issue, which celebrates the centennial of Edwin Hubble’s discovery that ours is not the only galaxy, there is no need to fear the cosmic perspective. In fact, there…