Editing Fred Hoyle (section)

===Rejection of the Big Bang===
While having no argument with the [[Georges Lemaître|Lemaître]] theory (later confirmed by [[Edwin Hubble]]'s observations) that the universe was expanding, Hoyle disagreed on its interpretation. He found the idea that the universe had a beginning to be [[pseudoscience]], resembling arguments for a creator, "for it's an irrational process, and can't be described in scientific terms" (see [[Kalam cosmological argument]]).<ref>Smith, Quentin [http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/quentin_smith/bigbang.html A Big Bang Cosmological Argument For God's Nonexistence]. ''Faith and Philosophy''. April 1992. Volume 9, No. 2, pp.&nbsp;217–237</ref> Instead, Hoyle, along with [[Thomas Gold]] and [[Hermann Bondi]] (with whom he had worked on [[radar]] in the [[World War II|Second World War]]), in 1948 began to argue for the universe as being in a "steady state" and formulated their [[Steady State theory]]. The theory tried to explain how the universe could be eternal and essentially unchanging while still having the galaxies we observe moving away from each other. The theory hinged on the creation of matter between galaxies over time, so that even though galaxies get further apart, new ones that develop between them fill the space they leave. The resulting universe is in a "steady state" in the same manner that a flowing river is—the individual water molecules are moving away but the overall river remains the same.

The theory was one alternative to the [[Big Bang]] which, like the Big Bang, agreed with key observations of the day, namely Hubble's [[Hubble's law|red shift observations]], and Hoyle was a strong critic of the Big Bang. He coined the term "Big Bang" on [[British Broadcasting Corporation|BBC]] radio's ''Third Programme'' broadcast on 28 March 1949.<ref>{{cite magazine|title=Continuous Creation|url=https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/69b1544319ce4bda81a9aa3fca177450|magazine=Radio Times|publisher=BBC|date=27 March 1949|issue=1328}}</ref> It was said by [[George Gamow]] and his opponents that Hoyle intended to be pejorative, and the script from which he read aloud was interpreted by his opponents to be "vain, one-sided, insulting, not worthy of the BBC".<ref>Mitton, Simon, ''Fred Hoyle - a life in science'', p.&nbsp;129, Cambridge University Press, 2011.</ref> Hoyle explicitly denied that he was being insulting and said it was just a striking image meant to emphasize the difference between the two theories for the radio audience.<ref>Croswell, Ken, ''The Alchemy of the Heavens'', chapter 9, Anchor Books, 1995.</ref> In another BBC interview, he said, "The reason why scientists like the "Big Bang" is because they are overshadowed by the Book of Genesis. It is deep within the psyche of most scientists to believe in the first page of Genesis".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/a_mile_or_two_off_yarmouth|title=A Mile or Two Off Yarmouth|date=24 February 2012|access-date=4 August 2014|website =BBC|last=Curtis|first=Adam}}</ref>

Hoyle had a famously heated argument with [[Martin Ryle]] of the [[Cavendish Astrophysics Group|Cavendish Radio Astronomy Group]] about Hoyle's steady state theory, which somewhat restricted collaboration between the Cavendish group and the [[Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge|Cambridge Institute of Astronomy]] during the 1960s.<ref>Mitton, Simon, ''Fred Hoyle a life in science'', Chapter 7, Cambridge University Press, 2011.</ref>

Hoyle, unlike Gold and Bondi, offered an explanation for the appearance of new matter by postulating the existence of what he dubbed the "creation field", or just the "C-field", which had negative pressure in order to be consistent with the [[law of conservation of energy|conservation of energy]] and drive the expansion of the universe. This C-field is the same as the later "de Sitter solution" for [[cosmic inflation]], but the C-field model acts much slower than the de Sitter inflation model.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Coles|first1=P.|title=Inflationary Universe|url=https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Glossary/Essay_inun.html|website=NED|publisher=NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database|access-date=22 March 2020}}</ref> They jointly argued that continuous creation was no more inexplicable than the appearance of the entire universe from nothing, although it had to be done on a regular basis. In the end, mounting observational evidence convinced most cosmologists that the steady-state model was incorrect and that the Big Bang theory agreed better with observations, although Hoyle continued to support and develop his theory. In 1993, in an attempt to explain some of the evidence against the steady-state theory, he presented a modified version called "[[steady-state model|quasi-steady state cosmology]]" (QSS), but the theory is not widely accepted.

The evidence that resulted in the Big Bang's victory over the steady-state model included discovery of [[cosmic microwave background]] radiation in the 1960s, and the distribution of "young galaxies" and [[quasar]]s throughout the [[Universe]] in the 1980s indicate a more consistent age estimate of the universe. Hoyle died in 2001 having never accepted the validity of the Big Bang theory.<ref name="Telegraph obit">{{cite news|title=Professor Sir Fred Hoyle|url=https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1338125/Professor-Sir-Fred-Hoyle.html|work=[[The Telegraph (UK)]]|date=22 August 2001}}</ref>

{{blockquote|How, in the big-bang cosmology, is the microwave background explained? Despite what supporters of big-bang cosmology claim, it is not explained. The supposed explanation is nothing but an entry in the gardener's catalogue of hypothesis that constitutes the theory. Had observation given 27 Kelvins instead of 2.7 Kelvins for the temperature, then 27 kelvins would have been entered in the catalogue. Or 0.27 Kelvins. Or anything at all.|Hoyle, 1994<ref>Hoyle, Fred ''Home Is Where the Wind Blows: Chapters from a Cosmologist's Life'' (autobiography) Oxford University Press 1994, 1997, p. 413, {{ISBN|0198500602}}</ref>}}