UNIVERSE W4

TASK 4.1

Changing ideas: explore the change to the origin model as new evidence became available, re Gamow vs Hoyle:

1. read the 1955 article Origin of everything: hot bang or ageless universe? and then

• read Hoyle Scoffs at “Big Bang” Universe Theory

• what are the main ideas of the two theories presented?

2. read the 1965 article Murmur of a Bang

• What is the ‘new’ evidence?

• How did the theory change in the ten years between the two articles?

• read Barbara Gamow’s poetic response to  Ryle vs Hoyle

Commentary on Ryle versus Hoyle by Barbara Gamow, George Gamow's wife:

"Your years of toil," said Ryle to Hoyle,

"Are wasted years, believe me.

The steady state is out of date.

Unless my eyes deceive me,

My telescope has dashed your hope;

Your tenets are refuted.

Let me be terse: our universe

Grows daily more diluted!"

Said Hoyle, "You quote Lemaître, I note,

And Gamow. Well, forget them!

That errant gang and their Big Bang—

Why aid them and abet them?

You see, my friend, it has no end

And there was no beginning,

As Bondi, Gold, and I will hold

Until our hair is thinning!"

"Not so!" cried Ryle with rising bile

And straining at the tether;

"Far galaxies are, as one sees,

More tightly packed together!"

"You make me boil!" exploded Hoyle,

His statement rearranging;

"New matter's born each night and morn.

The picture is unchanging!"

"Come off it, Hoyle! I aim to foil 

you yet" (The fun commences)

"And in a while," continued Ryle,

"I'll bring you to your senses!"

Note: Lemaitre was a Belgian astronomer and cosmologist who formulated the big-bang theory; he held that the universe began in a cataclysmic explosion of a small, primeval “super-atom.”