Continuous creation
Media
Part of Panorama
- Title
- Continuous creation
- Language
- English
- Source
- Panorama Volume XIII (No.7) July 1961
- Year
- 1961
- Rights
-
- Fulltext
- Continuous Creation The u.s. navy is trying to test a theory that many mys■ terious radio noises coming from outer space may be the whispers of further creation. Dr. Herbert Friedman of the Naval Laboratory, a resear cher, said that experiments with high altitude rockets, and possibly satellites, might provide the answer. If the theory is proved correct it would explode an op posing view held by other scientists that the universe was created in one big bang billions of years ago. The Navy’s planned studies stem from a theory first ad vanced by such men as the famed English cosmologist Dr. Fred Hoyle that the creation of matter is still going on in the vast reaches of outer space. Hoyle’s “Steady State” theory, shared by some scientists but challenged by advocates of the one-shot universe con cept, further holds that galaxies, great clusters of stars si milar to our own Milky Way, are continuously being formed. Finally, it proposes that many of the still-unidentified radio noises from outer space may be related in some way to the process of formation of new galaxies—adding to the billions of such galaxies already known to exist. Cosmic radio noises—sometimes called “the music of the cosmos”—are being picked up constantly by huge radio te lescopes in various parts of the world. And these radiowaves, when converted to audible signals, sound “like gravel on a tin roof,” according to some astronomers. Sources of some of these emissions have been traced to certain stars, constellations and even planets within the Milky Way galaxy, and some to gaseous areas of space beyond that. But the cause of many of the more distant noises still remains a mystery, although some scientists believe they may be due to previously formed galaxies colliding at enor mous distances from the earth. Friendman said the Navy’s prospective tests are not con cerned directly with the radio noise but with a related as pect of the theory held by Hoyle and others—namely, that a particular type of X-rays is also released with the forma tion of “new” galaxies. 68 Panorama
- pages
- 68