# 10. The Big Bang Theory
Image Source: NASA (Public Domain)
Credit: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI) and the HUDF Team
Release Date: March 9, 2004
Let's Start at the Very Beginning...
Let’s start at the very beginning… …after all, it IS a very good place to start!
In fact, let’s fire up those pyrotechnics and start with a BANG! A BIG BANG!
Let there be light!
Now let that light be separated by darkness…
Sound Familiar? If you’re interested in astronomy, you should recognize this opening as our prevailing cosmological theory, affectionately known as the Big Bang – #10 on our list of the greatest images and imaginations in Astronomy and Space Exploration.
When Albert Einstein unveiled his General Theory of Relativity in 1915, its complicated mathematics posed a disturbing conclusion – the universe is growing. Einstein rejected his own formulas and tried in vain to undo them.
In 1922, the Russian Alexander Friedmann solved these equations. Although Einstein himself refereed and signed off on Friedmann’s work, he underplayed its ramifications, and Friedmann’s paper remained in obscurity.
Two years later, Georges Lemaître, also using Einstein’s Theory of Relativity as a basis, published his own independent research. A skeptical Einstein replied: “Your math is correct, but your physics is abominable.” Lemaître called his idea the “Primeval Atom” describing his theory as “the Cosmic Egg exploding at the moment of the creation.”
The 1930’s saw American Howard Percy Robertson and Arthur Geoffrey Walker of Great Britain add to this research. History cites all 4 men with uncovering the secret hidden within the arcane arithmetic of the General Theory of Relativity – the theory of the expanding universe.
But it’s Fred Hoyle who, during a 1949 radio broadcast, we credit with coining the term “Big Bang.” It’s been said Hoyle, a proponent of an alternative hypothesis known as the Steady State Theory, used the term derisively, although Hoyle later denied this.
Like a great big cold war, the superpowers of science fought a back-and-forth battle – Big Bang vs. Steady State – until two anonymous Bell Labs workers decided 1964 was the perfect year to clean up some pigeon droppings. Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, trying to find the source of some annoying noise, accidentally discover cosmic microwave background radiation – the radio wave cinders of our universe’s explosive beginning; thus sealing the argument in favor of the Big Bang. The duo’s discovery comes in at #18 on the AstronomyTop100 list
By the way, the image you see is the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, the Farthest, Oldest Largest Patch of Real Estate in the universe. This image ranked #12 on the AstronomyTop100 list.