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Georges Lemaître had proposed an early version of the Big Bang theory in 1931. In 1936 it was nowhere near the scientific consensus -- that didn't happen until

by nkoren 12y ago

Georges Lemaître had proposed an early version of the Big Bang theory in 1931. In 1936 it was nowhere near the scientific consensus -- that didn't happen until the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background, 29 years later. But knowledge of the Big Bang and the Hubble redshift aren't, by themselves, sufficient to explain what Stapledon wrote. Those things just show that the universe has expanded. For most of the 20th century, people assumed that the acceleration of the universe would diminish -- either asymptotically approaching zero, or reversing into a "Big Crunch". For the galaxies to accelerate beyond the point where photons can bridge the gaps between them, they need to not only have been accelerated, but to keep accelerating, which is a very unintuitive notion (what would be driving the acceleration?) My guess is that Stapledon was influenced by Einstein's Cosmological Constant, which predicted exactly this kind of acceleration, but which Einstein himself had repudiated several years earlier, calling it "his biggest blunder". When I first read Star Maker in 1997, I figured that even if Stapledon had been up-to-the-minute about the Big Bang, he somehow hadn't gotten the memo about the Cosmological Constant. So I chalked this passage up as one of several things that Stapledon had definitely gotten wrong. A year later, Dark Energy was discovered, and suddenly it appeared that Stapledon was right all along. This did my head in a bit. Somehow, Stapledon had been spectacularly smart/lucky in crafting his story from a mix of freshly-proposed and freshly-discarded theories. So no, clairvoyance isn't strictly necessary to explain this. But just to be safe, I'll retain that parenthetical question mark after "fictional(?)" when describing Star Maker.

mcguire 12y ago
If I understand correctly, Einstein's cosmological constant was intended to produce a steady-state universe, not an accelerating one. 20th century cosmology could be seen as a long argument over the sign of Einstein's constant.
- nkoren 12y ago
  I think you're correct about the motivation for the cosmological constant. By adjusting the sign of the sign of the constant, you could produce a universe which was expanding, contracting, or steady-state. When Hubble's constant got nailed down, that definitively meant that the universe was expanding, and Einstein was happy to accept that. The problem was that if you tweak the constant to produce that result, then it also says that the universe is not only expanding, but accelerating. Which didn't seem to make the slightest bit of sense, so Einstein dropped it, and Stapledon didn't. (Standard disclaimer: I'm not a cosmologist, and probably have no idea what I'm talking about.)
  - fsiefken 12y ago
    Fascinating! I think it's better to look at Hubble's law then the cosmological constant in this particular regard. Hubble's law was published at the end 20's decade. If you contemplate the law it follows naturally (although counter-intuitively) that very far away galaxy's might speed away from each other faster then the speed of light. How this can be understood with regard to relativistic effects or the uncross-able universal light speeding law is another intriguing topic. So perhaps Stapledon thought of this or someone else thought about this (Lemaitre?) and Stapledon read or heard it. With regard to the cosmological constant, Einstein dropped it but Lemaitre didn't. Lemaitre argued in the early 1930's that the rate of expansion of the universe was accelerating. http://www.amazon.com/The-Day-Without-Yesterday-Cosmology/dp/1560259027 http://www.amazon.com/The-Day-Without-Yesterday-Cosmology/dp... "Lemaître was then invited to London in order to take part in a meeting of the British Association on the relation between the physical Universe and spirituality. There he proposed that the Universe expanded from an initial point, which he called the "Primeval Atom" and developed in a report published in Nature.[15] Lemaître himself also described his theory as "the Cosmic Egg exploding at the moment of the creation"; it became better known as the "Big Bang theory," a pejorative term coined during a BBC radio broadcast by Fred Hoyle who was an obstinate proponent of the steady state universe, even until his death in 2001." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre So some have (mistakenly) attributed intuition of dark energy to Einstein and his cosmological constant or some like you would argue that Stapledon was spectacularly smart or lucky but I think I'd attribute it to Lemaitre and I think indirectly (or directly) Stapledon heard or read about this. Perhaps as an academic he was even present at the "British Association" meetup on science and spirituality. But if so, why did Lemaitre keep Einstein's cosmological constant in his own work and why did he think the expansion rate of the universe was increasing? Even so I'd like to believe Stapledon really was traveling among the stars 'in some way', also his description of the out of body experience is oddly similar to credible accounts later in the 20th century and might be autobiographical but if not could be explained by him reading earlier accounts of this psychological effect. edit: apparently Lemaitre discovered Hubble's law before Hubble did! http://www.universetoday.com/90862/the-expanding-universe-credit-to-hubble-or-lemaitre/ http://www.universetoday.com/90862/the-expanding-universe-cr...

by nkoren 12y ago

mcguire 12y ago

If I understand correctly, Einstein's cosmological constant was intended to produce a steady-state universe, not an accelerating one. 20th century cosmology could be seen as a long argument over the sign of Einstein's constant.

nkoren 12y ago
I think you're correct about the motivation for the cosmological constant. By adjusting the sign of the sign of the constant, you could produce a universe which was expanding, contracting, or steady-state. When Hubble's constant got nailed down, that definitively meant that the universe was expanding, and Einstein was happy to accept that. The problem was that if you tweak the constant to produce that result, then it also says that the universe is not only expanding, but accelerating. Which didn't seem to make the slightest bit of sense, so Einstein dropped it, and Stapledon didn't. (Standard disclaimer: I'm not a cosmologist, and probably have no idea what I'm talking about.)
- fsiefken 12y ago
  Fascinating! I think it's better to look at Hubble's law then the cosmological constant in this particular regard. Hubble's law was published at the end 20's decade. If you contemplate the law it follows naturally (although counter-intuitively) that very far away galaxy's might speed away from each other faster then the speed of light. How this can be understood with regard to relativistic effects or the uncross-able universal light speeding law is another intriguing topic. So perhaps Stapledon thought of this or someone else thought about this (Lemaitre?) and Stapledon read or heard it. With regard to the cosmological constant, Einstein dropped it but Lemaitre didn't. Lemaitre argued in the early 1930's that the rate of expansion of the universe was accelerating. http://www.amazon.com/The-Day-Without-Yesterday-Cosmology/dp/1560259027 http://www.amazon.com/The-Day-Without-Yesterday-Cosmology/dp... "Lemaître was then invited to London in order to take part in a meeting of the British Association on the relation between the physical Universe and spirituality. There he proposed that the Universe expanded from an initial point, which he called the "Primeval Atom" and developed in a report published in Nature.[15] Lemaître himself also described his theory as "the Cosmic Egg exploding at the moment of the creation"; it became better known as the "Big Bang theory," a pejorative term coined during a BBC radio broadcast by Fred Hoyle who was an obstinate proponent of the steady state universe, even until his death in 2001." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre So some have (mistakenly) attributed intuition of dark energy to Einstein and his cosmological constant or some like you would argue that Stapledon was spectacularly smart or lucky but I think I'd attribute it to Lemaitre and I think indirectly (or directly) Stapledon heard or read about this. Perhaps as an academic he was even present at the "British Association" meetup on science and spirituality. But if so, why did Lemaitre keep Einstein's cosmological constant in his own work and why did he think the expansion rate of the universe was increasing? Even so I'd like to believe Stapledon really was traveling among the stars 'in some way', also his description of the out of body experience is oddly similar to credible accounts later in the 20th century and might be autobiographical but if not could be explained by him reading earlier accounts of this psychological effect. edit: apparently Lemaitre discovered Hubble's law before Hubble did! http://www.universetoday.com/90862/the-expanding-universe-credit-to-hubble-or-lemaitre/ http://www.universetoday.com/90862/the-expanding-universe-cr...