This is CBSI in the world. I'm John Batcher, 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 University, are looking at the big topics of the moment, which is cosmology, but particle physics combined with cosmology,

and 46, 47, 48 are critical moments in the development of these competing or parallel

theories.

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 horror movie, a scary movie, that ends with the beginning and begins with an ending.

It's looped. A dream that becomes a nightmare that becomes a fact.

And at the end of this, they have a what is it paul so after seeing this movie which is uh which which has a twist ending where the

nightmare is repeated again and again they went back to bondi's apartment in Cambridge, had a few drinks,

and over drinks, Tommy Gold said, well, what if the universe is like that? So they thought about

and they said, well, maybe we can design a model of the universe that even though it expands,

new matter fills in the gaps.

So it pretty much looks the same forever.

So as the galaxies move apart from each other, then new matter slowly trickles in.

That matter clusters, eventually form stars, and finally forms galaxies.

So I like to think of the difference between the Big Bang and the steady state

as having to do with stadium seating. So imagine, let's say, Yankee Stadium, people are watching

...