'A DAY WITHOUT YESTERDAY' The priest who did the math behind the Big Bang
Midbon, Mark
"A DAY WITHOUT YESTERDAY' Georges Lemaitre & the Big Bang Mark Midbon n the winter of 1998, two separate teams of as- Newton and James C. Maxwell suggested...
...the Royal Astronomical Society published an English trans- Hoyle and others favored an approach to the history of the lation of Lemaitre's paper in its Monthly Notices of March universe known as the "Steady State" in which hydrogen 1931...
...But while most scien- Lemaitre decided that the universe tists-including the mathematician was expanding...
...Lemaitre published his calculations and was a unique event, while other scientists believed his reasoning in Annales de la Societe scientifique de Bruxthat the universe would shrink to the point of another Big elles in 1927...
...diocese of Malines, where, in his leisure This discovery would have come as no time, he read mathematics and science...
...abominable...
...I have now had more Royal Academy of Belgium...
...He was forced to leave after the astronomers expected to find the rate of expansion to be a year, however, to serve in the Belgian artillery during decreasing...
...Sir Arthur Eddington volunteered to Commonweal 1 8 March 24, 2000 work out a solution...
...This led me lines, Cardinal Josef Van Roey, made Lemaitre a canon of to reconsider my theoretical prejudices...
...The Big Bang, which I have ever listened...
...But while out yesterday...
...In fact, it was Fred Hoyle, an astronomer at tween observation and theory...
...He believed this burst of Lemaitre's calculations showed fireworks was the beginning of that the universe had to be either time, taking place on "a day with- shrinking or expanding...
...An article about ning of time but only part of an infinite sequence of Big Lemaitre appeared on February 19, 1933, and featured a Bangs and Big Crunches...
...scientific turmoil caused by the supernovae results, he has Despite this high praise, there were some problems with adapted very quickly...
...the universe was expanding, at least in the present era, but But in 1964 there was a significant breakthrough that conthey resisted the implication that the universe had a begin- firmed some of Lemaitre's theories...
...Lemaitre solved this problem by expropriating Einstein's Is there a paradox in this situation...
...Perhaps gravity In January 1933, both Lemaitre and Einstein traveled to could provide an alternative explanation...
...For one, Lemaitre's calculated rate of ex- dices" makes one think of the attitudes that hampered scipansion did not work out...
...really happen on a day without yesterday...
...quanta...
...Few people took notice...
...Lemaitre suggested accidental discovery required the passage of several months that the world had a definite beginning in which all its mat- for its importance to sink in...
...This microwave interference If the world has begun with a single quantum, the no- came to be recognized as cosmic background radiation, a tions of space and time would altogether fail to have remnant of the Big Bang...
...In accordance with prevailing scientific wisdom, Engineering in Louvain in 1913...
...Duncan Aikman covered these therefore, was not a unique event which marked the beginseminars for the New York Times Magazine...
...the theory of relativity...
...He came to this conStephen Hawking-predicted that clusion after observing the reddish gravity would eventually slow down glow, known as a red shift, surrounding the expansion of the universe and make objects outside of our galaxy...
...but because he is both...
...ets...
...When Albert Einstein first published his theory of ilar, startling discovery...
...The British versity became a center of opposition to Lemaitre's theory of astronomer realized that Lemaitre had bridged the gap be- the Big Bang...
...Instead they found it to be increasing- World War 1. When the war was over, he entered a discovery which has since "shaken astrono- Maison Saint Rombaut, a seminary of the Archmy to its core" (Astronomy, October 1999...
...Workers at Bell Laboning...
...Eventually, it won Arno Penzias ter and energy were concentrated at one point: the Nobel Prize in physics...
...He regarded the constant as the worst important not because he is a Catholic priest, not because mistake of his career, and he was upset by Lemaitre's use of he is one of the leading mathematical physicists of our time, his super-galactic fudge factor...
...verse as a burst of fireworks, com- For his research at Cambridge, paring galaxies to the burning Lemaitre reviewed the general theembers spreading out in a grow- ory of relativity...
...That same year he talked Bang, and so on...
...It was equally strong whether they pointed their himself wrote in the English journal Nature that the notion of telescope at the center of the galaxy or in the opposite dia beginning of the world was "repugnant...
...Some theorized California for a series of seminars...
...they would only begin while recovering from a heart attack in the Hospital Saint to have a sensible meaning when the original quan- Pierre at the University of Louvain...
...In England the Royal Astronomical Society gathered to consider Mark Midbon is a senior programmer/analyst at the University of this seeming contradiction between visual observation and Wisconsin...
...At Eddington's suggestion, Cambridge, who sarcastically coined the term "Big Bang...
...Lemaitre de- professors, Arthur Eddington, was scribed the beginning of the uni- the director of the observatory...
...Lemaitre did not think cosmological constant...
...gion and science,' Lemaitre has been telling audiences over Einstein did not take kindly to Lemaitre's use of the cos- and over again in this country...
...What was more, it always had the same wavelength The Belgian priest responded to Eddington with a letter and it always conveyed the same source temperature...
...They were used to the idea that time had gone on for- ratories in New Jersey were tinkering with a radio telescope ever...
...Where Einstein had used it in an at- so...
...Einstein imagined an unknown After decades of struggle, other force-a cosmological constantscientists came to accept the Big which kept the world stable, Bang as fact...
...If this suggestion is correct, the beginning of After his death, a consensus built in favor of Lemaitre's the world happened a little before the beginning of burst of fireworks...
...The archbishop of Ma- he told Astronomy magazine (October 1999...
...rection...
...When Lemaitre read of these proceed- After Arthur Eddington died in 1944, Cambridge Uniings, he sent Eddington a copy of his 1927 paper...
...He died in Louvain in tum had been divided into a sufficient number of 1966, at the age of seventy-one...
...A DAY WITHOUT YESTERDAY' Georges Lemaitre & the Big Bang Mark Midbon n the winter of 1998, two separate teams of as- Newton and James C. Maxwell suggested an eternal unitronomers in Berkeley, California, made a sim- verse...
...Duncan Aikman of the New York Times spotlighted tempt to keep the universe at a steady size, Lemaitre used it Lemaitre's view in 1933: "'There is no conflict between relito speed up the expansion of the universe over time...
...If interthe universe fall back toward its center, preted as a Doppler effect, this shift in color Lemaitre believed that the universe would meant that the galaxies were moving away keep expanding...
...When word of the 1998 Berkeley discovery that the uniThe caption read, "They have a profound respect and ad- verse is expanding at an increasing rate first reached Stephen miration for each other...
...But doubts did persist: Did this event space and time...
...atoms were continuously created and gradually coalesced Most scientists who read Lemaitre's paper accepted that into gas clouds, which then formed stars...
...0 Commonweal 19 March 24, 2000...
...When Georges Lemaitre was born in Charleroi, Belgium, It was Einstein's own grasp of physics, however, that soon most scientists thought that the universe was infinite in age came under fire...
...Eddington terference...
...After the Belgian detailed that gravity would slow down the expansion of the unihis theory, Einstein stood up applauded, and said, "This is verse and make it fall back toward its center, where there the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to would be a Big Crunch and another Big Bang...
...If the universe was expanding entists seventy years ago...
...the cathedral in 1935...
...It took a mathematician who also at a steady rate, the time it had taken to cover its radius was happened to be a Catholic priest to look at the evidence with too short to allow for the formation of the stars and plan- an open mind and create a model that worked...
...He argued that the Big Bang from us...
...They were both ob- relativity in 1916, it seemed to confirm that the universe had I serving supernovae-exploding stars visible gone on forever, stable and unchanging...
...But the phrase "theoretical prejuLemaitre's theory...
...An international commission time to consider the observations, and they look quite good," awarded him the Francqui Prize...
...His view is interesting and mological constant...
...Later, he changed his mind...
...over great distances-to see how fast the universe is ex- Lemaitre began his own scientific career at the College of panding...
...The next year Pope Pius XI inducted Hawking was actually being modest...
...This published in Nature on May 9, 1931...
...Hawking, he said it was too preliminary to be taken seriFor his work, Lemaitre was inducted as a member of the ously...
...large photo of Einstein and Lemaitre standing side by side...
...The observations made in Berkeley sup- with Einstein in Brussels, but the latter, unimpressed, said, ported Lemaitre's contention that the Big Bang was in fact "a "Your calculations are correct, but your grasp of physics is day without yesterday...
...In the face of the Lemaitre into the Pontifical Academy of Science...
...The work of Isaac vations of other galaxies confirmed the red shift...
...Lemaitre received the good news any meaning at the beginning...
...As with Einstein's ing sphere from the center of the calculations ten years earlier, burst...
...In 1929 Edwin Hubble's systematic obserand constant in its general appearance...
...surprise to Georges Lemaitre (1894- After his ordination in 1923, Lemaitre 1966), a Belgian mathematician and studied math and science at CamCatholic priest who developed the bridge University, where one of his theory of the Big Bang...
...It seemed illogical that infinite millions of years had when they discovered a frustrating kind of microwave inpassed before the universe came into existence...
Vol. 127 • March 2000 • No. 6
