So, Hubble was convinced that there was a "big bang" but scientists started doing some tricky calculations to see if he was really right. And the thinking went back a bit further.
Just hang on in there - it's not too hard - YET! We need to look at three men with BIG ideas!
Georges Henri Joseph Edouard Lemaitre : born 1894, died 1966, an astronomer (also a Belgian Priest) suggested that everything came from the "Primeval Atom"; not so much a big lump; but a very special small lump!
Well, he'd be biased, wouldn't he? He was believed in God before he started thinking scientifically.
But the next man didn't think that way.
George Gamow (from Ukraine), born 1904 died 1968, calculated that all the hydrogen and helium in the universe ...
Not so fast. Explain, please...
Hydrogen and helium; they are the most common gases in the whole universe. There's amazingly huuuuge amounts of the stuff And before George Gamow did his calculations, no one could explain why there was so much in the 'recipe' for the Universe.
O.K., go on!
Well, it could be explained by the science of the "big bang".
Ralph Asher Alpher (an American), born 1921 died 2007, suggested that the evidence of the "big bang" might be found by listening for a particular radio signal from space; the remains of that very first explosion! O.K. More correctly the end result of a very rapid "inflation". So more clever people started to look for this radio signal that would prove the whole theory
They looked with Radio Telescopes, which "see" radio waves, not light waves!
And did they find it?
Once they had dealt with the pigeons
What have pigeons got to do with the "big bang"? Or, is this a joke?
In 1964, Arno Penzias ...
... was working with Robert Woodrow Wilson at the Bell Laboratories research site at Holmdel, New Jersey (in America).
But the signals from their radio telescope were being spoiled by a nasty hissing sound. First they thought it was interference from New York; then they remembered the pigeons! They climbed into the "big ear" of the telescope and cleared out the piles of pigeon poo! Then they shot the pigeons! But the mystery hissing was still there......
So, after checking their figures again and again, They realised that they had found it!
This "squashed Easter egg" is a picture of the radio signal they found; the remains of the "big bang", detectable throughout the universe!
The hissing sound was EXACTLY what Ralph Alpher's calculations had predicted!
It is called the COSMIC MICROWAVE BACKGROUND with a wavelength of approximately 1.9 millimetres. A splendid fact to drop into the conversation at parties!
So the theories were right? Everything did start from...
And this is what Arno Penzias wrote, soon after his discoveries:-
Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing; with a very delicate balance needed to provide the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying, one might say 'supernatural', plan.
Of course, the rules of science cannot explain "something from nothing". That's where faith and religion have something to say. That's where the idea of God comes in.
Next Bible Blog : Thursday 13th September
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