Fred amongst the Stars

The Nature of the Universe: A Series of Broadcast Lectures

by Fred Hoyle (Basil Blackwell, 1950)

I think that within 100 years it may indeed be possible to leave the Earth, or at any rate for rockets containing radio-operated cameras to do so.

Fred Hoyle (1950)

1950. Seventy-two years ago. That is just within living memory for someone we know, maybe even ourselves. In a thousand ways the world has changed not just beyond recognition, but beyond the imaginations of the most progressive minds of the age.

A young astrophysicist was invited by the BBC to give a series of talks on The Wireless about what was then called the “New Cosmology”. And so, the 34-year-old Yorkshireman Fred Hoyle stepped up to the microphone to speak about the huge advances in understanding of the universe which had taken place since the work of pioneer British cosmologists Jeans and Eddington. Sir James Jeans was a mathematician who had proposed how stars and planetary systems had formed out of clouds of dust and gas, while also in the 1920s, Sir Arthur Eddington had laid the groundwork for understanding the nuclear processes in the inner working of stars. This little book is a transcript of those lectures, and it makes for fascinating reading. Hoyles’ words brought, to a general audience, these new and exciting ideas which had emerged in the preceding 3 decades. We can stand at that moment in time and share the sense of excitement from the cutting edge of science, but also experience the view from the other end of the telescope: this is a snapshot of what was not known then, that we are learning now.

The author starts with a description of the Earth, Moon and planets. In 1950 the “Space Age” was still 7 years in the future (to the launch of Sputnik 1) so we have to be reminded that all we knew about our Solar system was based on observations from the surface of the Earth. Even the origin of the craters on the Moon was a subject of debate. Hoyle favoured the Bombardment Theory (in which impact craters were formed by the collision of asteroids etc.) over the Volcanic Theory. We may be surprised that Hoyle was in the minority at the time, but often in his career he would find himself arguing for ideas against those of the Establishment. At least in this one he was proven right.

The lectures proceed through the emerging theories of the origin of elements within stars and supernovae, much of the detail Hoyle himself with fellow physicists and astronomers would develop in brilliant work throughout the 1950s. I was surprised at the clarity with which he was able to speak about the knowledge that we are recycled star dust from dead stars that exploded long before our Sun was born! He expands the scope of his vision beyond the Galaxy and our Solar System’s place in it, out to the billions of Galaxies beyond.

But when it comes to the origin and development of the expanding Universe, Fred nails his colours to the mast of a “continuous creation” hypothesis, like that of Jeans, and he famously argues here against the concept of the Cosmos having begun with a great explosion from some origin in time. It is in this context of opposing the theory that he coins the phrase “Big Bang”, almost to ridicule the idea. Fred may have been in a minority on this but was not alone in holding out against the prevailing view. It would be another 16 years when the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation was discovered that the argument was settled once and for all.

Other parts of Hoyle’s cosmology were less familiar to me: he describes how an idle conversation about wanting to understand historical climate changes led him and a collaborator to expound the theory of stars (including the Sun) having variable temperature because of the different rate at which they gather additional hydrogen fuel as they “tunnel” through the Galactic gas and dust clouds, at various rates. This aspect gets a lot of attention in his talks, though once again I don’t think it has stood the test of time. He would be in a camp with the environmentalists today, given his support for alternative (but not nuclear) energy to make human life sustainable in the long term. Hoyle was also convinced that there was life elsewhere in the Universe, just from consideration of the vast numbers of stars and potentially planetary bodies, although it would be 1992 before one was detected. And he was developing his own calculus of the possibilities of and conditions for life, a decade before Frank Drake formulated the famous equation that bears his name.

Fred Hoyle is entertaining to read, because he is never short of an opinion, and seems perfectly at ease to being the “odd one out” if he disagrees with the most popular theories. His language is lively and direct: he was a fine science communicator. I think of him as like a Fred Truman or Geoffrey Boycott, if they’d taken up physics instead of cricket! One favourite and quintessentially English illustration that Hoyle used is an explanation of how the cosmology theories were deduced from limited information available (the measurements from ground-based telescopes) and allows knowledge of the universe to advance. The example was devised by Arthur Eddington in 1938 and consists in reconstructing the complete ball-by-ball story of a cricket match just from the scorecard. It has to be seen (and attempted) to be believed. It is eccentric and brilliant, like Fred Hoyle’s remarkable career, most of which still lay ahead of him.

With upwards of 1,000,000 planetary systems per galaxy the combined total for the parts of the Universe that we can see comes out at more than a hundred million million. I find myself wondering whether somewhere among them there is a cricket team that could beat the Australians.

Fred Hoyle (1950)

This book is a great document in the “history of ideas” and is a good example of what Science really is about: it is NOT a fixed textbook of unchangeable laws, but a a process. It is the constant open-minded round of discovery, reassessment, imagination, testing and questioning. What will our understanding of the Universe look like from the standpoint of someone 50 or 100 years from now? Looking out at the stars and trying to make sense of what we find there will continue to delight and surprise us.