I believe Fred was also convinced that viruses come from outer space and
actually designed an experiment to prove it. I've forgotten the details.
Seems he was a brilliant man that just got off track a bit. Sort of like
Linus Pauling and the Vitamin C thing.
Charlie
On Tue, Nov 10, 2009 at 4:28 AM, Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Andrew Fildes wrote:
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Black_Cloud
> > Fred Hoyle - serious astronomer and so-so writer who, ironically,
> invented the term Big Bang.
> > I remember it - fairly ordinary but I had enough stamina to finish it!
> >
>
> I don't think that was it. I'm sure I read Hoyle's book, and I'd
> remember if that was it. Seems more likely an older book and maybe an
> Eastern European author- maybe. Certainly someone more unknown and
> mysterious to me than Hoyle.
>
> To those challenged in the history of cosmology, the irony is that Fred
> Hoyle was the leader of the Flat Earth Society - oops, the Steady State
> Universe group of astronomers and astrophysicists. Evidence of expansion
> was by then irrefutable, but they held that density stayed steady, as I
> recall, through matter popping into existence in deep space.
>
> George Gamow was the major mouthpiece for the expanding universe with a
> fixed quantity of matter, so density was dropping. Hoyle was said to
> have coined the term Big Bang as a taunt, to make Gamow & Co. sound
> silly. Didn't work; he gave the name that stuck to the theory that won.
>
> Can you tell I was a science nerd back when all this was current? :-D
>
> Moose
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