The Origin of the Universe 2
The Reith Lectures
BBC
4.2 • 770 Ratings
🗓️ 14 December 1958
⏱️ 32 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This year's Reith Lecturer is Professor Bernard Lovell, the first Director of the Jodrell Bank Experimental Observatory, and Professor of Radio Astronomy at Manchester University. During the Second World War, he helped to develop radar systems for aircrafts, for which he received an OBE in 1946. He delivers six lectures on the wonders of the solar system in his series entitled 'The Individual and the Universe'.
In his final lecture entitled 'The Origin of the Universe 2', Professor Bernard Lovell considers the alternative theory which science can offer on the beginning of the universe. His exploration of the continuous creation theory concludes his Reith lectures.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures. |
| 0:05.1 | This lecture in the series The Individual and the Universe, given by Bernard Lovell, was originally broadcast in 1958. |
| 0:14.5 | This is the BBC Home Service, The Reith Lectures. |
| 0:19.5 | In the last of his six talks on the individual and the universe, |
| 0:24.3 | Professor A.C. B. Lovell, OBE, F-R-S, concludes his consideration of the rival theories of the origin |
| 0:32.0 | of the universe. Professor Lovell. |
| 0:37.2 | Last week I described one of the evolutionary theories of the origin of the universe. |
| 0:43.3 | According to this theory, all the material of the universe and all of time and space |
| 0:48.3 | was originally concentrated in a super dense primeval atom, |
| 0:52.3 | which disintegrated about 20 or 60,000 million years ago. |
| 0:57.0 | During the course of tonight's lecture, I should describe the theory of continuous creation, |
| 1:03.0 | which has quite different implications. But before I do that, I want to consider this problem |
| 1:09.0 | of the beginning, which is inherent in the evolutionary |
| 1:12.1 | theories. |
| 1:14.0 | With an effort of imagination, the human mind can trace its way back through the thousands |
| 1:18.8 | of millions of years of time and space, and we can attempt to describe in common concepts |
| 1:24.3 | the condition of the primeval atom. The primeval atom was unstable and must have disintegrated |
| 1:31.8 | as soon as it came into existence. There we reach a great barrier of thought because we begin to |
| 1:38.8 | struggle with the concepts of time and space before they existed in terms of our everyday experience. |
| 1:46.0 | I feel as though I've suddenly driven into a great fog barrier where the familiar world has disappeared. |
| 1:53.0 | I think one can say that philosophically the essential problem in the conception of the beginning of the universe is the transfer from the state of indeterminacy |
| 2:04.6 | to the condition of determinacy |
... |
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