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Going Steady [1]

Horror movies often inspire sleepless nights. But one that had its American premiere 75 years ago this week inspired something different: a new model of the universe.

“Dead of Night” was a British production. In it, an architect is invited to a country house for the weekend. Although he’s never met any of the people there, he recognizes them from a series of nightmares, which he recounts. At the end, he murders one of the people. He then awakens and realizes it was all a dream. But he then gets a phone call inviting him to the house — starting the nightmare all over again.

Three British physicists — Thomas Gold, Hermann Bondi, and Fred Hoyle — were pondering the beginning and end of the universe. They knew that the universe was expanding, but they didn’t agree with the idea that it had a single point of origin. Hoyle even called the theory the “Big Bang” as a term of derision. Instead, they thought the universe had neither a beginning nor an end.

After they saw the movie, Gold wondered whether the universe might be similar — constantly “starting over.”

So they came up with their own theory of the universe — the Steady State Theory. It said that matter was constantly being created as the universe expanded. That way, the universe would maintain a constant density. And it would just keep going — forever.

Observations confirmed the Big Bang, though, leaving the Steady State alone — in the dead of night.
 

Script by Damond Benningfield

Keywords:

  • Astronomers [2]
  • Astronomy in Popular Culture [3]
  • Big Bang [4]
  • Cosmology [5]
  • History of Astronomy [6]
StarDate: 
Tuesday, June 29, 2021
Teaser: 
A “spooky” origin for a theory of the universe
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Source URL:https://legacy.stardate.org/radio/program/2021-06-29

Links
[1] https://legacy.stardate.org/radio/program/2021-06-29 [2] https://legacy.stardate.org/astro-guide/astronomers [3] https://legacy.stardate.org/astro-guide/astronomy-popular-culture [4] https://legacy.stardate.org/astro-guide/big-bang [5] https://legacy.stardate.org/astro-guide/cosmology [6] https://legacy.stardate.org/astro-guide/history-astronomy