I have tried... to present analytic calculations of cosmological phenomena, and not just report results obtained elsewhere by numerical computation. … - Steven Weinberg

In 1929 Hubble announced... a "roughly linear" relation between and distance. ...His data points ...did not really support a linear relation. But in the early 1930s he had measured redshifts and distances out to the , with a redshift <math>z \eqsim 0.02</math>, corresponding to... 7,000 km/sec and a linear relation... was evident. The conclusion... the universe is really expanding. ...At the time of writing, the largest... <math>z=6.96</math>.
It may eventually become possible to measure the expansion rate <math>H(t) \equiv \dot{a}(t)/a(t)</math> at times <math>t</math> earlier than the present, by observing the change in very accurately measured redshifts of individual galaxies over times as short as a decade.

If there is no point in the universe that we discover by the methods of science, there is a point that we can give the universe by the way we live, by loving each other, by discovering things about nature, by creating works of art. And that—in a way, although we are not the stars in a cosmic drama, if the only drama we're starring in is one that we are making up as we go along, it is not entirely ignoble that faced with this unloving, impersonal universe we make a little island of warmth and love and science and art for ourselves. That's not an entirely despicable role for us to play.

[I]n 1897 Thomson... detected a deflection... by electric forces between the rays and the electrified metal plates. ...due largely to the use of better vacuum pumps ...to where the effects of residual gas ...became negligible. (Some evidence for... deflection was [also] found... by Goldstein.) [D]eflection was toward the positively charged plate... away from the negatively charged one, confirming Perrin... that the rays carry negative electric charge.