Homage To The Heretics

Science does not build its theories by a single line attack.
Sir Fred Hoyle, The Frontiers of Astronomy, p. 126

This blog was kicked off by watching videos late into the night at the University of You Tube. And one night I happened to come across one entitled Universe - The Cosmology Quest. Not only did it have rare and unknown footage of my childhood hero Sir Fred Hoyle, but it included all the heretics of that wild and wonderful time of my well misspent youth. And many that I have never heard of before and some more that I had no idea that they were involved with the cosmology quest.

Sir Fred Hoyle

I will never forget that part where Halton Arp was describing his theory of how a galaxy gives birth, and there was that animation of it as he talked of it. Well Dear Reader, it took the top of my head right off so to speak. Something just clicked deep inside. It one of the most important hallmarks of a valid theory in that it was self similar. Halton Arps theory of a galaxy giving birth looks exactly like a corral spitting forth a seed. There was no mention of these things in my high school  physics texts.

Halton C. Arp and Jayant Narlikar

 All the heretics were present, too many to name in this short writing. But I was amazed that they somehow got Jayant Narlikar to appear. And he was most interesting and I am sure someday soon to be proven right for all eternity. The Oracle of Ottawa was so set on fire that he dug up all his Fred Hoyle books from the stacks finally realizing that the time has come to get the reading in and done. And as providence does provide I found a mint new copy of A Different Approach To Cosmology in mint condition in hardcover, with the dust jacket, unread. It is not unread now. It was by Hoyle, Burbidge, and Narlikar, hail the gang was all together one last time.

Now the Oracle of Ottawa has been to college and why he even graduated! So A Different Approach was not that hard to get through. The end result of that was to read Ernst Mach's most famous book  'The Science of Mechanics', and would you believe that I had a fresh facsimile copy that I bought years ago and kept for that time when I had time. The time came and the book was wacked in no time, and I can understand why it is so often mentioned even today. I will riff on it in this blog in the near and probably into the distant future...

Of course the contemporary 'Big Bangers' say that all these heretics are ancient history. Sir Fred Hoyle has been gone from us since 2001. But somehow much to the chagrin of the bangers the Universe keeps getting older and bigger around. Objects that are of several million solar masses are being found where it is impossible for the Big Bang to have placed them. The Very Large Telescopes of the European Space Agency are detecting objects being ejected from galaxies near and far, like God was pitching batting practice.. And you often are starting to hear that nightmare quip that puts the fear of God, that can't possibly exist, into every bangers heart: The text books are going to have be re written...