The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Simon Singh supports Big Bang theory of the universe

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Dec 09, 2005

Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

Simon Singh supports Big Bang theory of the universe

Staff Reporter

Simon Singh at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore on Thursday. — Photo: K. Murali Kumar

BANGALORE: How did the universe begin? Where do the galaxies, stars, and planets come from? Freelance writer, science journalist and broadcaster Simon Singh provided answers to some of these questions to a packed audience at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc.), in an event organised by the Centre for Contemporary Studies, IISc. and the British Council.

In a lecture laced with wit and humour, Simon Singh traced the scientific struggle to answer these questions, which culminated in the Big Bang theory of the universe.

Mr. Singh credited the origin of the Big Bang to the Belgian scientist and Catholic priest Georges Lemaitre, who proposed that the universe was born by a massive instantaneous explosion.

He said that most people at that time did not agree with Mr. Lemaitre's theory and even accused him of mixing religion with science.

When Mr. Lemaitre took his theory to Albert Einstein, the physicist was supposed to have said: "Your calculations are correct, but your physics is abominable."

In one of the two musical interludes during the talk, Mr. Singh played Led Zepplin's popular title "Stairway to heaven" backwards and asked members of the audience if they heard the words Satan. Only a few said they did.

He said the song when played backwards contains a certain implausible stanza. He then played the song backwards again, this time projecting the absurd stanza on the screen. Many in the audience were surprised to hear the stanza this time.

Mr. Singh used this to explain how susceptible people are to suggestions and cited this psychological fact as one of the reasons why the Big Bang theory faced stiff opposition in the beginning, despite there being some corroborating evidence.

Mr. Singh said that as better data became available, the Big Bang theory emerged as the dominant theory of the cosmos. He cited the use of the Doppler effect by Edwin Hubble to show that galaxies are rapidly receding away from each other.

The final confirmation of the Big Bang hypothesis came in 1962 from the work of Robert Wilson and Arno Penzias, two Bell Labs scientists, who began puzzling over a steady hum of background microwave interference they kept encountering when trying out their new radio telescope. This interference was one of the predictions of the Big Bang theory, made by George Gamov and others in 1948.

Mr. Singh has a Ph.D. in Particle physics from Cambridge University and CERN, Geneva and is the author of the newly released book "The Big Bang".

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Karnataka

News Update

Stories in this Section