The Real Heroes of the Big Bang Revolution
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The discovery that the universe had a beginning was one of the most remarkable scientific achievements of the last century, and that story is told cinematically in the new movie The Story of Everything. The developments sparked a cosmological paradigm shift and a radical new way to understand our world. But the three scientists most responsible for the big bang revolution are largely unknown to the public and underestimated by other scientists in their field. On this ID The Future out of the vault, host Andrew McDiarmid begins a conversation with esteemed cosmologist Jean-Pierre Luminet, who sets the record straight on the real heroes of the Big Bang Theory with his book The Big Bang Revolutionaries, published by Discovery Institute Press.
In Part 1, Dr. Luminet kicks off the conversation by explaining the value of knowing the history of science. He cites 19th century French philosopher Auguste Comte, who wrote: “You can’t fully understand the science until you know its history.” For 30 years, across twenty non-fiction science books and eight historical novels, Luminet has shared the history of scientists and their ideas. With The Big Bang Revolutionaries, he unravels the twists and turns of the development of relativistic cosmology. Here, as in his book, Luminet tells the story of how three men — Belgian theoretical physicist Georges Lemaitre, Russian physicist Alexander Friedmann and the Russian-American physicist and cosmologist George Gamow — in the face of conventional scientific wisdom, offered a compelling view of a singular creation of the universe in what Lemaître termed a “primeval atom.”
The conversation then zooms into the chief architect of the Big Bang. In addition to his work as a theoretical physicist, Georges Lemaitre was also a Catholic priest. How did he manage the interplay between his scientific pursuits and his religious faith? Luminet shares what he has learned about Lemaitre’s attitude toward science and religion: “I would say that Lemaitre was a man of faith before he was a man of religion,” says Luminet. He saw no conflict between the two “because both are seeking the truth…”
This is Part 1 of a two-part conversation. Look for Part 2 next!
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