BEFORE DARK MATTER COULDN'T BE FOUND: 4/4: Flashes of Creation: George Gamow, Fred Hoyle, and the Great Big Bang Debate, by Paul Halpern
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 7 August 2023
⏱️ 8 minutes
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BEFORE DARK MATTER COULDN'T BE FOUND: 4/4: Flashes of Creation: George Gamow, Fred Hoyle, and the Great Big Bang Debate, by Paul Halpern
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08PV5CLZQ/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0
A respected physics professor and author breaks down the great debate over the Big Bang and the continuing quest to understand the fate of the universe. Today, the Big Bang is so entrenched in our understanding of the cosmos that to doubt it would seem crazy. But as Paul Halpern shows in Flashes of Creation, just decades ago its mere mention caused sparks to fly. At the center of the debate were the Russian-American physicist George Gamow and the British astrophysicist Fred Hoyle. Gamow insisted that a fiery explosion explained how the elements of the universe were created. Attacking the idea as half-baked, Hoyle countered that the universe was engaged in a never-ending process of creation. The battle was fierce. In the end, Gamow turned out to be right—mostly—and Hoyle, along with his many achievements, is remembered for giving the theory the silliest possible name: "the Big Bang." Halpern captures the brilliance of both thinkers and reminds us that even those proven wrong have much to teach us about boldness, imagination, and the universe, itsel
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| 0:18.8 | This is CBS Eye in the World. I'm John Bacheld with Professor Paul Halpern. His |
| 0:29.8 | new book is Flashes of Creation. George Gamoff, Fred Hoyle and the Great Big Bang |
| 0:34.8 | Debate. We've now found evidence of the big bang or the big squeeze or the |
| 0:40.0 | creation moment. We also have better and better understanding of how long |
| 0:44.4 | ago it happened, 13.8. The temperature of the cosmos turns out to be, I believe |
| 0:50.6 | three degrees Kelvin. Is that correct, Paul? Three? Yeah, more precisely about |
| 0:55.5 | 2.73 degrees Kelvin, but three was about what they came up with at that |
| 0:59.9 | turn. And we follow Gamoff first because he's older |
| 1:04.3 | and his health becomes a challenge to him in the 1960s. He will die in 1968. |
| 1:11.6 | He's a smoker and he has troubles with alcohol. However, before he passes away, |
| 1:18.0 | he recognizes that his work has contributed to these discoveries. Is that correct, Paul? |
| 1:25.1 | Oh, yes. He started writing to people. He wrote to people. He wrote to Dickie. And his |
| 1:30.9 | student Ralph Alper also was writing continuously to them to try to get the record straight |
| 1:37.3 | because some of the calculations that were done by the Dickie and Peoples Group essentially |
| 1:43.2 | reproduced some of the work that Alper and under the tutelage of Gamoff had done in the 1940s. |
| 1:51.5 | So they were trying to bring attention to their earlier papers. And at one point, Gamoff went to |
| 1:57.2 | a conference in New York and at the conference, he made a statement. If you lose a penny and then |
| 2:06.3 | you later find a penny, it's still the same penny, the same with my theories. |
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