JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE KEEPS DISCOVERING THE UNEXPLAINED IN THE CREATION OF GALAXIES. 3/4: Flashes of Creation: George Gamow, Fred Hoyle, and the Great Big Bang Debate, by Paul Halpern

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

News, Books, Society & Culture, Arts

4.6 • 2.7K Ratings

🗓️ 11 May 2025

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE KEEPS DISCOVERING THE UNEXPLAINED IN THE CREATION OF GALAXIES. 3/4: 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, itself.

2007 DARK MATTER?

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The weather. Tomorrow, expect a biting cold front. Hmm, how naughty. I wonder what I'll be
0:06.9	wearing or taking off. The night will be wild and untamed. Expect heavy, lashing rain that'll soak you
0:13.8	to the skin. By Monday, temperatures will rise slowly but surely reaching their peak in the afternoon.
0:21.2	Not in the mood for miserable weather?
0:23.4	Fly cheaply to Turkey with Sun Express.
0:26.3	Sun Express, non-stop sunshine.
0:34.3	This is CBSI in the world.
0:36.3	I'm John Batch for visiting with Professor Paul Halpern, Professor of Physics at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia. His new book is Flashes of Creation, George Gamoff, Fred Hoyle, and the Great Big Bang Debate. We are now after the Second War, and our two protagonists, Fred Hoyle at Cambridge and George Gamoff at George Washington
0:56.6	University, are looking at the big topics of the moment, which is cosmology, but particle
1:03.6	physics combined with cosmology. And 46, 47, 48 are critical moments in the development of these competing or parallel theories.
1:15.1	There is a wonderful moment, however. It is either 46 or 47. Our hero, Mr. Hoyle, and two of his colleagues at Cambridge, Bondi and Gold, watch a movie called The Dead of Night. It is a
1:30.4	horror movie, a scary movie that ends with the beginning and begins with an ending. It's looped.
1:37.2	A dream that becomes a nightmare that becomes a fact. And at the end of this, they have a breakthrough.
1:43.8	What is it, Paul?
1:45.5	So after seeing this movie, which has a twist ending where the nightmare is repeated again and
1:54.5	again, they went back to Bondi's apartment in Cambridge, had a few drinks. And over drinks, Tommy Gold said, well,
2:03.4	what if the universe is like that? So they thought about it and they said, well, maybe we can
2:08.0	design a model of the universe that even though it expands, new matter fills in the gaps.
2:14.3	So it pretty much looks the same forever. So as the galaxies move apart from each other,
2:19.7	then new matter slowly trickles in. That matter clusters, eventually form stars, and finally forms
2:26.9	galaxies. So I like to think of the difference between the Big Bang and the steady state
2:32.8	as having to do with stadium seating.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 1 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from John Batchelor, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of John Batchelor and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.