Tale of the Big Bang

 
Presented by Andy Paultanis on June 6, 2013
Advanced Communication Series: Storytelling
Project 1: The Folk Tale
Time: Seven to Nine Minutes

 

Bam….[Andy gets to slam unto a table top the “Cosmos” picture book by Carl Sagan to get everyone’s attention.].

The earth was created….According to the 17^th Century  Bishop James Ussher in the year 4004, BC, October 23rd,  at exactly 9 a.m.

Almost every human culture has their “tale” on the creation of the universe.

I think most people in this room believe in the  “The hypothesis of the primeval atom.”  Most people know it as the “Big Bang Theory.” 

The Big Bang Theory is one of the best known scientific theories of our time.  Just to do a survey, how many people here know the name of the scientist who is the  father of The Big Bang Theory?

If you don’t know, don’t feel bad.  You’re not supposed to know.  When he created the second most watched PBS Series of all time, Cosmos, in the 1980’s, Carl Sagan was extremely careful not to talk about the father of the Big Bang.

His name was George Lemaitre who as a young man served with the Allies in the Belgian army as an artillery officer in World War I.  He was awarded the equivalent medal to the United States Silver Star for bravery.

After the war, Lemaitre earned a doctorate in Mathematics from the University of Louvain in Belgium.  He went on to graduate study in astronomy at Cambridge University in England.  After Cambridge, he spent a year of study at the Harvard College Observatory. In 1927 he earned a PhD in Physics from MIT.  

George Lemaitre was also a Roman Catholic Priest. 

At the beginning of the twentieth century,  actually beginning with Aristotle, Galileo, Isaac Newton, and Albert Einstein all believed the universe was stable and an eternal universe.  Einstein used a “cosmological constant” to plug his various equations to maintain an eternal view of the universe.      

Lemaitre was intrigued with Einstein’s theories.  The first thing Lemaitre did was to toss out Einstein’s cosmological constant. Then he worked Einstein’s equations backwards.  In 1927, Lemaitre was the first person to publish a paper asserting  the universe was expanding. Lemaitre calculated the rate of expansion of the universe from observations of faint nebulae. This calculation today is known as Hubble’s Law?

 

Einstein didn’t believe the universe could expand and Einstein was not happy with Lemaitre.  In late 1927 when Einstein met Lemaitre at a scientific conference, he told Lemaitre to his face, “Your mathematical computations are correct but your physics is atrocious.”   

In 1929, Edmund Hubble published a paper identical to Lemaitre with additional observational evidence of new galaxies in an expanding universe.

In the early 1930’s,  Lemaitre learned Einstein was going to visit Edmund Hubble and flew to California. According to Stephen Hawking, it was in this meeting of these three great minds, Einstein, Hubble and Lemaitre,  modern Cosmology was born. 

 

Personally, I believe Hubble and Lemaitre slapped Einstein around, knocked some sense into the man, who came out of the meeting convinced the universe was expanding.  Einstein admitted his use of the cosmological constant was “the greatest blunder of his career.”

In 1931, Lemaitre published his paper on the “Hypothesis of the Primeval Atom”. Lemaitre calculated the universe began from a very tiny point where time, space and matter was created.  An event so violent  it would echo background microwave radiation throughout the universe.  As with Albert Einstein, it took a great deal of courage to challenge the existing scientific establishment.

Because Lemaitre was a Roman Catholic priest, many people thought he was trying to prove the story of biblical creation.  Not true.  Lemaitre was an accomplished scientist who had a firewall between his scientific beliefs and his religious beliefs.  Lemaitre became very upset with the Catholic Pope who wanted to use his theory as proof of biblical creation.    

In 1949, Fred Hoyle, a brilliant British scientist was so upset with this obscure theory, went on BBC Radio to argue with the general public against it. Hoyle coined the phrase the “Big Bang Theory.”

When I hear the phrase, “Big Bang Theory”, I hear little children taunting  naa, naa, naa big bang theory. Ha..Ha..Ha!

The term Big Bang was intended to be a put-down and an insult. Fred Hoyle was mocking and tying to make fun of Lemaitre.

In 1964, two radio astronomers by the name of Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson  accidentally and I mean accidentally, because they were never taught as students about the Big Bang, discovered the background microwave radiation of the Big Bang.  This was the smoking gun proving the theory. 

They were given use of a radio telescope just outside New York City and as they were trying to calibrate it, kept hearing a buzzing noise no matter where they pointed the feed horn of the telescope.  They reached a point where they thought the noise was from pigeon droppings on the feed horn.

 

Being nice guys, they trapped the pigeons and set they free a hundred miles away. Soon, the pigeons were back, they were homing pigeons.  In the early 1960’s they did what many American men would do, they took out shotguns and solved the pigeon problem.  It didn’t solve the buzzing noise.

They eventually realized they had discovered the echo of the Big Bang.  They should have won a Noble Prize for cleaning pigeon droppings but instead in 1978 won the Noble Prize in Astronomy. 

Everyone in this room has heard the echo of the Big Bang.  If you ever tuned a radio or television and heard some static, one percent of that noise is from the Big Bang echo.  

In 1966, as George Lemaitre lay dying is a hospital, they told him, “George, they found the background radiation  of the Big Bang.  Your hypothesis of the Primeval Atom is now irrefutable scientific fact."

A few days later George Lemaitre died

[Special Thanks to Jim Harrington for video taping this speech.]