Welcome to ID the Future. I'm your host, Andrew McDermott. Today, I conclude my conversation with Jean-Pierre Lumine about his new book, The Big Bang Revolutionaries, the untold story of three scientists who re-enchanted cosmology, published by Discovery Institute Press. The discovery that the universe had a beginning is one of the most remarkable achievements of 20th century science. It sparked a cosmological paradigm shift and offered a radical new way to understand our world. But alas, the three scientists most responsible for the Big Bang revolution are largely unknown to the general public and underestimated by astrophysicists and cosmologists. Well, the Big Bang revolutionaries amends the record by telling the remarkable story of how three men, Belgian theoretical physicist Georges Lumatra, Russian physicist Alexander Friedman, and the Russian-American physicist and cosmologist Georges Gamow, in the face of conventional scientific wisdom, offered a compelling new view of a singular creation of the universe in what Lumatra termed a primeval atom. Dr. Lumine, who is joining me today, is a French astrophysicist specializing in black holes and cosmology. He is Emeritus Research director at the French National Center for Scientific Research. He is a member of the Astrophysics Laboratory of Marseille and the Universe and Theories Laboratory in Paris. Luminaire has been awarded several prizes, including the Georges Lumatra Prize for his work in cosmology, the UNESCO Kalinga Prize, and the Einstein Medal for Popularization of Science. He has published more than 20 science books, eight historical novels, and eight poetry collections. And get this, the asteroid 5523 Lumine was named in his honor. Jean-Pierre, welcome back to ID the Future. Yes, thank you, Andrew, for this second invitation to develop a little bit about this fascinating history of modern cosmology. Yes, thank you for your time. Well, in the first half of the conversation that we've had, we talked about the importance of knowing the history of science. You talked about discovering it yourself and then being able to share with others the history of science through your nonfiction and your fiction books. You began to give us more detail about the true fathers of the Big Bang Theory, Lumatra, Friedman, and Gamo. We also talked about whether the Big Bang Theory was friendly to the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. And we did get a chance to zoom in to Lumatra's faith and how that informed his work, which I thought was very interesting. Well, today we'll continue to discuss the true heroes of the Big Bang revolution and how the Big Bang theory has fared in light of the latest scientific evidence. Well, let me jump in there. In explaining the sad neglect of Lumatra in the standard history of the Big Bang theory's triumph, one cause that you point to was Lumatra's humility. He seemed much more interested in pursuing the truth than in who got credit for it. And in fact, just a few weeks before he died, and I read this in your book, when informed by his assistant of the fossil radiation discovered by Arnold Penzias and Robert Wilson, he is said to have commented, I am glad now we have the proof. But for many years, he did not have the proof, and he had to rely on his intuition. Tell us about Lumatra's humility and his patience. Yes, yes. In fact, before Le Metre humility, one of the reasons, as I also explained in my book, of the initial neglect of Le Metre thinking was just because his first fundamental paper published in 1927 about the interpretation of galaxy redshift with expanding space was written in French. So it's a long story, and it's only after English translation in 1931 that Le Maître became internationally known. But, well, you're right, Le Maître's humility. In fact, you know that it's a French astronomer called Paul Coudert, probably American people have never heard about Paul Coudert, was probably the first to rightly underline the priority of Lemaitre over Hubble, concerning, in fact, the discovery of the expanding universe, and the so-called Hubble law, until it was only recognized in 1950, the book of Paul Cudder. But what's interesting is that Lemaitre himself never claimed any priority about that. And in fact, Le Maître even found that the coup de praise overly complimentary for him. And this was, of course, one of the signs of his deep humility. Another sign has been told to me by the assistant of Georges Le Maître, named Odon Godard, that I met in Louvain University 30 years ago, before himself died, unfortunately. And Godard told me that story, that when the news of the discovery of fossil radiation by Penzias and Wilson was announced in 1965, Le Met was very ill in hospital in Louvain with heart problems. And so Godard told me that, yes, he was very ill. And Godard told him, told Le Met about the discovery. And LeMet replied that he was happy because we know he had the proof of his theory, but a little bit disappointed because the fossil radiation was not made of cosmic rays as he initially expected, but in the form of electromagnetic radiation. But in fact contrary to George Gamow who after the discovery of Penzias and Wilson claimed that he had a priority and he claimed for a Nobel Prize in fact Le Ma never claimed to have priority on any major advances in modern cosmology although he was really the father of most major advances advances which should have won him the Nobel Prize in Physics that of course he never got So this is a real humility of Lema and, well, consistent with his personality, very attaching personality of both a religious man but with very deep thinking on everything, yeah. Yeah, and that intellectual humility is very important to scientists, you know, or needs to be part of the scientific enterprise. We do have to be humble. We do have to be patient. And we shouldn't be too selfish about this enterprise because we're all standing on the shoulders of giants. You know, we're all building on what has come before. So I think Loumattre demonstrates this. It's a rather rare attitude, in fact, among the scientists. If we take the example of Hubble, it's exactly the contrary. Hubble constantly claimed that everything came from his research in order to get more credit for Mount Wilson Observatory and all that. And even also today, some of the great scientists of the day try to claim that everything comes from them. So it's quite remarkable that a personality like Lumet, who was really the real father of the Big Bang, never claimed any priority on all that. It is indeed. Well, what about Alexander Friedman? Was he as cautious as Lumetra about using science to support a Judeo-Christian worldview? In fact, we have some information about Alexander Freeman's religious beliefs. In fact, we know that he was an Orthodox Christian. For instance, in 1925, in fact, just before his accidental death, when he was still the director of the main geophysical observatory in St. Petersburg, at a time of anti-religious anti-church persecution by the communist regime, Freeman married his second wife according to the Orthodox Christian rule. So, in fact, the term of creation of the world out of nothing that he used for the first time in 1924 in his book, The Universe, Space and Time, was not, in fact, a matter of empty words for him. It meant really something deep. However, it's funny that, in fact, no doubt that the precaution towards the communist authorities, Friedman did not make the connection with the biblical account, but did the connection with the Hindu doctrine of the cyclical creation of the world with the god, Brahma. So in some sense, in some way, Friedman was a little bit more, was more concordist than George Lemaitre, but with a strange way of invoking a Hindu religion rather than Catholic or Christian religion. Was he able to leave the Soviet Union or was he sort of stuck there, could not visit America or other parts of Europe? No, Friedman could not leave Russia, Soviet Union. But I'll tell the interesting story of the fact that when Friedman published his first fundamental article of 1922 about the first dynamical solution of the Einstein's equation, Eisenstein, in the first moment, reacted negatively to this article of Friedman. Friedman could not leave the Soviet Union, but he talked to one of his friends, Krutkov, who had the right to leave the Soviet Union, to meet Einstein in Berlin and discuss with him. And in fact, it's Krutkov who convinced Einstein that it was Friedman who was right and not Einstein. Interesting. Yeah, there's a lot of barriers here. There's a language barrier, there's the distance barrier between these great thinkers, and it's amazing that we still got the revolution out of it. Well, by all accounts, George Gamow seemed to have a personality that fitted him well for bucking the system and thinking outside the box. Tell us a bit more about Gamow's personality. Well, Gamow was a Soviet and American polymath. He was born in Russia. but after a naturalized American. So he was really a polymath. He was also a theoretical physicist. He was a cosmologist. Later on, he was interested in ADN, in biology, and something like that. And he was, in the field of cosmology, he was an early advocate and developer of Le Maître's Big Bang Theory. But he added to its nuclear physics, he added to the Big Bang Theory, the nuclear physics and the fundamental idea of what we call the Big Bang nucleosynthesis, namely the generation of light elements in the hot Big Bang universe. However, it's interesting to see that Gamow's scientific reputation was a little bit altered by his high sense of humor and fantasy. Gamow delighted in practical jokes and humorous twists, including in very serious scientific publications. So there is a famous story of his most famous prank was a pioneering article called the Halfer-Bette-Gamow paper of 1948, in which they described the genesis, the cleosynthesis of light elements. So it was a very serious paper in its style and contents. But Gamow, in fact, could not resist adding his colleague Hans Bethe to the list of authors as a pun to the first three letters of the Greek alphabet, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Alpha, Beta, Bethe, Gamow. Whereas Bethe never participated to the writing of the article. So in the first moment Bette reacted negatively to this utilization of his name because he was not asked for that But after seeing the success of the article he said OK it was OK Also, I can add that in his late career, Glamov directed much of his attention to teaching and wrote popular books on science, including the famous Mr. Tompkins series of books, very astitious books for popularizing, general relativity, and all that. And some of them remain in print more than half a century after their original publication. But anyway, well, Gamow didn't get a Nobel Prize in physics, as he claimed after the discovery of cosmic microwave radiation. Well, maybe it was too late for him. But because his sense of humor and fantasy could refrain a little bit, the idea of giving him a Nobel Prize, very easy to use, Nobel Prize in physics. Well, he sure sounds like a character. Now, what specifically did he do to help further the Big Bang theory and Lomatra's ideas? I just want to be clear on that. Well, as I said before, in fact, one of the reasons was the lack of convincing and definite experimental proofs, in fact, until the discovery of fossil radiation. But in fact, at a more theoretical level, I'd say that also that was the wrong idea that the Big Bang necessarily implied an initial point-like singularity, namely an absolute beginning of time where all physical quantities become infinite, which is, of course, physically absurd. In fact, the real big part is not that. It's just the history of the evolution of the universe, starting not from a point like singularity, but starting from a very hot and dense state, probably described also not only by general relativity, but also by quantum physics. And now we try to develop new theory mixing generativity and quantum physics to describe the very, very, very early universe. They are called quantum gravity theories. Another and maybe also interesting reason, maybe more interesting reason, for the reluctance to accept Le Maître S.D. is, in fact, of philosophical nature. Because for minds like Einstein, Eddington, and later on Fred Hoyle, in fact, you're It was the British astrophysicist Fred Hoyle who proposed the term Big Bang by derision to mock the idea. And he proposed instead the alternative steady state theory. Because for him and for them, it was difficult to admit that the universe was changing with time. So it's just a philosophical prejudice that universe must be eternal, does not change with time. And this is really why the Big Bang theory was a scientific revolution. The idea that the universe is not eternal. It has a history. Part of the history begins at time, finite time in the past. Perhaps the universe existed before. In new theory of contrarian reality, we have some idea of a pre-Big Bang universe. What was not the case at the time of Friedman and Le Maître. But so was really a revolutionary idea, which was not accepted by most of the scientific community, that the universe was finite in time, that's beginning in the past, and he was evolving. Yeah. And you do explain in your book the stages of this relativistic science revolution. And I thought that was very interesting. It takes time for these ideas to percolate, to be accepted, to be built on and added to. And you allude to that in your book. So it did take several decades for the basic ideas of the Big Bang Theory to be accepted for the reasons that you have mentioned. Well, what about today? Is the Big Bang Theory today now confirmed by astronomical observations? Yes. Well, in fact, until the 1970s, the three observational pillars of the Big Bang models were based on the interpretation. One, on the interpretation of galaxy-based chips in terms of expansion of space, made by Lemaître. After, by the origin of light atoms, like hydrogen, deuterium, and helium, in a very hot phase of the early universe, made by Gamow and his collaborators. And finally, the discovery of fossil radiation, which was a cool electromagnetic remnant of this hot phase in 1965. Well, now, since then, immense progress has been made thanks to major telescopes, such as WMAP, Planck, who observed in very, very details the structure of the cosmic micro-rubagrand radiation. and also more traditional telescopes, such as the famous Hubble Space Telescope, and more recently the James Webb Space Telescope, which allowed astronomers to go more deeply in the past of the early universe. And we can now say really that we have entered an era of high-precision experimental cosmology, which was not at all the case at the time of Friedman, Le Maître, and even Germont. And this high-precision experimental cosmology enables us to fix the fundamental parameters of the universe to within a few percent, only a few percent. So, well, really a detailed prediction. Well, despite all this, a number of questions remain unanswered today, notably the exact nature of the dark matter and dark energy that we know govern the cosmic evolution. So it's not the ordinary matter with galaxies and stars which govern the cosmic evolution. Two strange ingredients, much more important, dark matter and dark energy. Also there is the topological question that I been working on a great deal concerning in fact it concerns the global shape of the space. Is it infinite or is it finite with no limits or with no edge, with a particular shape? I described that in one of my books translated in English, which is called the wraparound universe. Okay. And there is also the question of whether the Big Bang was really a singularity or whether, thanks to quantum effects that are still poorly understood, Big Bang could have been preceded by a pre-Big Bang phase. So this is a work in progress with some quantum gravity theory, which extends the general picture of Big Bang theory to a possible pre-Big Bang phase, adding some quantum effect. And for me, it's a more interesting part of fundamental physics today to try to enlarge the general picture of the Big Bang model without changing the fundamental claims from the Big Bang, but eliminating some problems of the Big Bang theory itself, like, for instance, the singularity. Well, it's an exciting time to be studying this and researching this. Now, a final question. The Big Bang Theory has been in the news lately. What do you make of the recent claims that the image of mature early galaxies captured by the James Webb telescope are undermining or changing the Big Bang Theory? Well, I will say that it's just for me to make buzz. You know, in fact, scientific information, including that of coming from very serious space agencies like NASA, European Space Agency, has become partly spoiled, in fact, by exaggerated claims just to sell better the business of scientific research and get more credits, for instance, and more recognition of searchers. You know, in fact, for the general audience, it's more selling for a popular science magazine or a website of scientific information to say that new observation called into question the standard model of cosmology, rather than to say it's the same, for instance, for also the discovery of black holes, okay, but for cosmology. So it's more appealing rather than to say that, in fact, the detail of the Sandler model just needs to be studied in greater depths. And this is exactly what is happening now with the recent discoveries by the James Webb Space Telescope. Fascinating discovery of galaxies that form a little bit faster after the Big Bang than previously thought. But I can say that, believe me or not, this does not in any way call into question the broad outlines of the Big Bang model. But it does invite researchers, and in fact, this is what is most interesting in this affair, to better refine the parameters required for galaxy formation. For example, the idea of a first generation of primordial black holes, which is one of my specialties. So the idea of a first generation of primordial black holes created just after the Big Bang that would have acted as seeds accelerating the formation of a galaxy could be taken up again to explain this observation. And this idea was put forward some 30 years ago. And I mentioned, for instance, this idea in my popular book on black oaks that I published by Cambridge University Press as soon as 1992. So, well, as I said, of course, the observation of the James Webb Space Telescope are fascinating. But as far as I know, they does not undermine the general Big Bang. You have to look more deeply into the details of the standard model. Well, I think it's very interesting to have the instruments that we have today, like the James Webb Telescope and the other machinery that you've mentioned. Because you mentioned in your book that telescopes don't just go the distance as far as space, but they also help us go back in time. They help us see the past, and that's exciting. But it's great to hear that these ideas are holding up and the Big Bang revolution is still very much in play. And it's good to have that intellectual humility and patience that Lou Maitre demonstrated as we move further into the exploration of this. And on that note, I want to thank you for all of what you've brought to the subject. You have an amazing mind and amazing skill to demonstrate this to the public. So I want to thank you for all that you've done in service of cosmology and this grand exploration of our universe. Thank you, Andrew. It was a great honor and pleasure to have the opportunity to discuss about what made most of my life as a researcher with this fascinating mystery of the universe. Well, readers and viewers, it's time to get your copy of The Big Bang Revolutionaries. revolutionaries, you can do that at discovery.press. It's, of course, available everywhere the books are sold, but discovery.press will take you straight to it. You can read more, and you can tap into some excerpts that we have in written form, as well as a reading that I've done for ID the Future. So lots of resources, and just get your own copy and read this fascinating story of the history of this amazing cosmological revolution that has changed our view of the universe. Discovery.Press is the website to get the book. Thank you again, Dr. Luminate. For ID the Future, I'm Andrew McDermott. Thanks for listening and watching. Visit us at idthefuture.com and intelligentdesign.org. This program is copyright Discovery Institute and recorded by its Center for Science and Culture.
