Creation stories have been around as long as we have had stories. It's just one of those things that we can't seem to avoid asking ourselves almost in the same breath that we come up with an apocryphal answer. Most of these stories, as we know, are folklore tales made up by different peoples in order to make sense of their particular way of life.In 1929, however, the scientific quest to explain the origin of the known universe was catapulted when astronomer Edwin Hubble discovered that every part of the visible universe was hurling away from every other part. A small bit of backward induction implied that in the past everything was closer together, and back further still it must have been even closer until, at some point, all of it must have converged in a singularity. This conclusion was ridiculed by cosmologist Fred Hoyle when he referred to this as the Big Bang model of the universe. Little did Hoyle suspect the name would stick and come to be the explanation of choice for the majority of scientists.
In today's documentary, professor Jim Al-Khalili digs into the BBC archive to find footage that describes the history of the scientific attempt to understand the origin of the known universe, revealing appearances by Richard Feynman and Steven Weinberg, among others.
Can you imagine losing the Nobel Prize to someone who accidentally discovers what you were looking for?
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ReplyDeleteInteresting fact: A Catholic priest came up with the Big Bang Theory.
ReplyDeleteYep, it would later become one of those famous cases in which Einstein would have to recant his own conservative objections, which is weird, considering that the genius of his 1905 and 1915 papers was based precisely on his complete lack of orthodoxy.
ReplyDeleteOf course, Einstein himself put it best: "To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself."