PSI Blog 20230123 Interview with the Father (of the Big Bang)
English translation of the rediscovered 1964 French video of
the Reverend Monsignor Georges Lemaître.
Father Lemaître
and Professor Einstein at Caltech in 1933
Thanks to Pierre-Réal Gosselin via A Cosmology Group for this heads up. Here is the English translation of the interview:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2301.07198.pdf
This is the original video in French with Dutch subtitles:
[GB: Here are some neat quotes from the translation by
Gontcho A Gontcho and others:
First some history… Lemaître, a Jesuit priest, presented his
theory in 1927, just two years before Hubble mistakenly used the Doppler effect
in his atrocious title: “A relation between distance and radial velocity among
extra-galactic nebulae.” Lemaître knew about Hubble’s work in 1925 and interpreted
Hubble’s results as evidence for “universal expansion.”
In reaction to Lemaître’s explosion of the entire universe from a “primeval atom” Fred Hoyle invented his Steady State Theory. That became the only recognized alternative to the Big Bang Theory, probably because it also accepted universal expansion, which was becoming all the rage despite Hubble’s later rejection of that assumption.
It is somewhat ironic and hypocritical that Lemaître
challenges the creationist aspects of Hoyle’s 1948 Steady State Theory:]
“Now this is the key point of Hoyle’s theory: it all starts with hydrogen. The essential difference is whether this hydrogen is produced naturally by a reasonable physical process or, on the contrary, it is a kind of phantom hydrogen which appears with just the right amount of hydrogen to verify an a priori law.” (p. 3)
“Hoyle…said that when he started this theory, he thought he had to reject it. The expression he wrote down: “well nothing much happens, nothing much happens” [...] because, he said, there should be creation. What does this mean... creation? This word, creation, brings with it a whole philosophical or religious resonance that has nothing to do with the question. Behind this word, creation, what is there? There is simply that the apparition of hydrogen, as Hoyle supposes, is something quite fantastic and unexpected. That’s why he used the word creation. It is absolutely unexpected. And if I had to use another imagery to express the same thing, I would say that this hydrogen appears in a totally unexpected way like a ghost [dramatic emphasis on the word "ghost"]. It’s a kind of ghost as it would appear in castles in Scotland. To introduce a kind of ghostly hydrogen in this way would avoid the difficulty that the principle of Steady State seemed to be in opposition to the Principle of Conservation of Energy. In opposition with basically the most secure and solid thing in physics [i.e., the Energy Conservation Principle]. In order to maintain all this, one admits a... ghostly production of hydrogen. And what can we expect from hydrogen appearing without any physical reason, without any normal connection?” (p. 2)
[GB: In the last
reference below he pulls no punches, even referring correctly
to his proposal as cosmogony. Some of his statements are quite humble
even though lacking in introspection:]
“…I am not defending the primeval atom
for the sake of whatever religious ulterior motive. Of course, nobody knows
exactly what one’s psychology is, really. But, not only consciously I don’t
have this idea at all…” (p. 3)
“…if my theory is correct, it makes the philosophical problem of creation disappear, in a way.” “When one poses the problem of the beginning of the world, one is almost always faced with a rather essential difficulty: to ask oneself, why did it begin at that moment? Why didn’t it start a little earlier? And in a certain sense, why wouldn’t it have started a little earlier? So it seems that any theory that involves a beginning must be unnatural. To say “we decide at this point that it begins” ... This is what was expressed by saying: “it is made of nothing.” That is to say that we expected it to come from something; and we say “it doesn’t come from this something, it’s made of nothing”. Well... the point of view I’m coming to is quite different. That is, the beginning is so unimaginable, so different from the present state of the world that such a question does not arise.” (p. 4)
[GB: This defensive line of thought is sometimes expressed by
cosmogonists to this day. The general assumption is that the laws of physics
did not exist before the universe existed. Thus, there could be no violation of
conservation if that law did not exist before the universe
existed. Lemaître’s hypocrisy is thereby removed if one believes that.]
Lemaître’s papers:
[GB: Note that all these were “peer reviewed,” meaning they
were well accepted by those holding the fundamental religious assumptions of finity and creation, which remain
popular to this day.]
Lemaître, G., 1927, Un Univers
homogène de masse constante et de rayon croissant rendant compte de la vitesse
radiale des nébuleuses extra-galactiques: Annales de la
Société Scientifique de Bruxelles, v. 47, p. 49-59.
[https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1927ASSB...47...49L].
Lemaître, Abbé G., 1931a, A
Homogeneous Universe of Constant Mass and Increasing Radius accounting for the
Radial Velocity of Extra-galactic Nebulæ: Monthly Notices of the Royal
Astronomical Society, v. 91, no. 5, p. 483-490. [10.1093/mnras/91.5.483].
Lemaître, G., 1931b, The Beginning
of the World from the Point of View of Quantum Theory: Nature, v. 127, no.
3210, p. 706-706. [10.1038/127706b0].
Lemaître, Abbé G., and Eddington,
A.S., 1931, The Expanding Universe: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical
Society, v. 91, no. 5, p. 490-501. [10.1093/mnras/91.5.490].
Lemaître, Georges, 1950, The
Primeval Atom: An Essay on Cosmogony: New York, D. Van Nostrand, 186 p.
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