Re: Hoyle

Gordon Simons wrote:
>
> About Fred Hoyle, Glenn wrote:
> > Yeah and he thought that disease came from space ...
>
> In this regard, Martin Rees of Cambridge University wrote of Fred Hoyle
> (obituary published in Physics Today, November 2001):
>
> ".... A regrettable dispute led to Hoyle's premature retirement from
> Cambridge in 1972. He thereafter based himself for many years in a remote
> part of England's Lake District (hill-walking being one of his lifelong
> enthusiasms) before moving to the more sedate environs of Bournemouth. His
> consequent isolation from the broad academic community was probably
> detrimental to his own science; it was certainly a sad deprivation for the
> rest of us. His later scientific writings, which continued throughout the
> 1980s and 1990s, dealt, often controversially, with topics as disparate as
> Stonehenge, panspermia, Darwinism, paleontology, and viruses from space.
> ...."
>
> Several years ago I read a strange book by Fred Hoyle (containing many
> full-color pictures, but no index, and no references), entitled "The
> Intelligent Universe" (publisher: Michael Joseph, 1983). Hoyle, during his
> post-Cambridge years, had written this book to forcefully argue for
> panspermia, the theory that microorganisms or biochemical compounds from
> outer space are responsible for originating life on Earth -- and other
> parts of the universe where suitable atmospheric conditions exist. While
> most of the book focuses on establishing plausible reasons why life on
> earth had to have come from elsewhere in the universe, the only real data
> presented centers on some micrometeorites found in Minnesota, which,
> according to Hoyle, showed, under microscopic examination, to contain
> fossilized microbial life. Included in the book is a picture of the very
> biologist -- together with his microscope -- who had discovered these
> microscopic fossils from outer space.
>
> Intrigued, I decided to trace down -- if I could -- a professional article
> written by this biologist, discussing his findings -- to see what he had
> to say. But, alas, despite a hard search, I came up with absolutely
> nothing.
>
> At this point, my quest developed a truly bizarre twist. Since the
> biologist I was seeking had German-sounding first and second names, out of
> frustration, I asked a German (born and trained) biologist (my cousin's
> wife) whether she had ever heard of this fellow -- and I showed her the
> picture from the book. Indeed she had, and she immediately began to
> laugh. It seems that, as a young man, this star witness for Hoyle's case,
> was at the University of Gissen, working in her father's lab. (Her father
> was also a biologist -- of considerable reputation.) And then she told me
> of an amusing incident -- of when this young man discovered something very
> unusual in his microscope, which, excitedly, he reported to her father.
> After some investigation, it turned out that this "important discovery"
> was nothing more than a piece of lint.
>
> Well, I asked, could it have been the case that, after more experience, he
> became more proficient with his microscope, and with his scientific
> prowess? She thought not. According to her, he never accomplished
> anything of merit in Germany. He later took a position in South Africa,
> but, professionally, he came to nothing. So it seems that Hoyle's
> compelling data for panspermia has evaporated into nothing. Surely if
> microfossils within micrometeorites were a reality, there would be a
> clearly visible paper trail documenting such an important find.

        I was greatly enamored of Hoyle's version of the steady state cosmology in high
school & college (mainly via Hoyle's _Frontiers of Astronomy_ and Bondi's _Cosmology_),
but then the quasars & MWB blew it up. I still think that in many ways it's a beautiful
theory, the anti-religious part of its motivation notwithstanding.

        But Hoyle did kind of go off the deep end later, as Gordon & others have noted.
Hoyle wrote several science fiction novels, beginning with _The Black Cloud_, some of
which were decent - though they tended to be a bit didactic. One of the odder ones -
unfortunately I can't recall the title & it didn't get much run - popularized his idea
that quasars were ejected from the centers of galaxies. (Thus were local, thus didn't
undercut the SS theory.) In the novel a quasar has been ejected from the center of
_our_ galaxy & the accompanying radiation destroys all life on earth except around the
poles (because of the axial tilt). So it ends up with a few Gaelic speaking Scots
apparently inheriting the earth. I'm sure there are other examples of prominent
scientists writing novels to propagandize for their theories but I can't think of one
right now. (I guess one could say that the attempts at scientific writing by some YECs
are really novels.)

                                                        Shalom,
                                                        George

George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
Received on Wed Feb 11 13:54:49 2004