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The Nature of the Universe
Fred Hoyle had a series of radio programs in England printed in The Nature of the Universe. Sir Frederick "Fred" Hoyle FRS (24 June 1915 – 20 August 2001) was an English astronomer and mathematician noted primarily for his contribution to the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis and his often controversial stance on other cosmological and scientific matters—in particular his rejection of the "Big Bang" theory, a term originally coined by him on BBC radio. In addition to his work as an astronomer, Hoyle was a writer of science fiction, including a number of books co-written with his son Geoffrey Hoyle. Hoyle spent most of his working life at the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge and served as its director for a number of years. He died in Bournemouth, England, after a series of strokes.
121 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1950
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About the author
Fred Hoyle
117 books176 followersProfessor Sir Fred Hoyle was one of the most distinguished, creative, and controversial scientists of the twentieth century. He was a Fellow of St John’s College (1939-1972, Honorary Fellow 1973-2001), was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1957, held the Plumian Chair of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy (1958-1972), established the Institute of Theoretical Astronomy in Cambridge (now part of the Institute of Astronomy), and (in 1972) received a knighthood for his services to astronomy.
Hoyle was a keen mountain climber, an avid player of chess, a science fiction writer, a populariser of science, and the man who coined the phrase 'The Big Bang'.
Hoyle was a keen mountain climber, an avid player of chess, a science fiction writer, a populariser of science, and the man who coined the phrase 'The Big Bang'.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
April 11, 2008
an entertaining read as an eminent astronomer examines two competing theories for the origin of the universe, and explains why the so-called "big bang theory" can't possibly be true. unfortunately it's a little out of date.
January 30, 2023
This 1950 book (I read the original edition) outlines Hoyle’s steady-state cosmology. In a nutshell, the universe never began and never will end. Hoyle accepted the idea of an expanding universe, per Hubble’s findings, where galaxies move off into the void (“every receding galaxy will eventually increase its distance from us until it passes beyond the limit of the observable universe”), but for Hoyle new ones are formed constantly to take their place in a cosmic process of “continuous creation,” or “the perpetual bringing into being of new background material.”
As with a river analogy, water continually moves downstream, but the overall pattern remains. The problem with this analogy is that there is an ocean at the endpoint and a head water at the beginning, but with Hoyle’s model, there is neither. Hoyle’s response seems to be that, respectively, galaxies disappear beyond the observable horizon of the expanding universe (1) and that “created material…does not come from anything. Material simply appears - it is created.” This sounds like Einstein’s conversion of pure energy into matter (mass energy), but it does beg the question of why this should be so. In elaborating, Hoyle seems to be alluding to the presence of dark energy and dark matter before perhaps these terms were coined, when he discusses the “general background material” that fills space, “where the average density is so low that a pint measure would contain only about one atom.” This general background material thus becomes the repelling force that pushes the universe outward. (2) “The crucial consequence to be drawn from this new cosmological development,” he writes, “is that it is the interstellar gas, not the stars, that rule the Galaxy. It controls the motions of the stars.” Then he adds, “and just as it is the interstellar gas that controls the situation inside our Galaxy, so it is the background material that controls the universe as a whole. Moreover, the created material also supplies unending quantities of atomic energy, since by arranging that newly created material should be composed of hydrogen we explain why in spite of the fact that hydrogen is being consumed in huge quantities in the stars, the Universe is nevertheless observed to be overwhelmingly composed of it.” This background material steadily supplies the stuff of star formation and, via irregularities in the background material” produced by “the gravitational effect of the galaxies themselves, (new) galaxies are continuously formed by collections of condensed matter and energy.
The big-bang theory is the competitor cosmic model to Hoyle’s steady-state model. For Hoyle, the big bang (his characterization of it at the time) theory suggested a Genesis-Creator, which was perhaps one reason he saw it as pseudo-science, but he discounted it for scientific reasons as well. For one thing, the big bang put “the basic assumption out of sight where it can never be challenged by a direct appeal to observation,” as opposed to the data that he used that can, he believed, readily account for the steady-state notion. Also, he discounts the big bang because, in the outward flow of the matter-energy, hydrogen, the basic stuff of the cosmos, would dissipate as opposed to his theory where it is steadily converted into helium throughout the cosmos via the continuous creation process. (3) Also, the age of the universe, he says, is younger than that of the Milky Way galaxy. (4) And Hoyle believed that the big bang idea is inconsistent with two contradictory forces: that of condensation via gravity on the one hand and the contrary force of outward repelling (expansion) on the other. (5) In Hoyle’s view, with the expansion of the universe under the big bang, there would be the breaking of the gravitational bonds with distance, with gravity thus becoming less and less a factor in the overall cosmic structure.
The big bang scenario is the prevailing view these days and Hoyle’s theory has fallen into disfavor. What is missing in Hoyle’s discussion is how Einstein’s theory might fit into the picture that he, Hoyle, presents. (6) Hoyle’s model comes across as a conveyor belt, with a huge gap about what happens on the underside. Per Einstein, might there be an overall spacetime curvature that affects the movement of galaxies so that, instead of moving into the void, their continual movement around spacetime moves in a circular way, to a returning point that, in effect, becomes Hoyle’s new beginning (“continuous creation”)? This alternative scenario, interestingly, would also be compatible with the big bang model as the return around curved spacetime could also arrive back at a condensed state (Big Crunch) that might, again and again, result in a series of cosmic ages of big bang expansions and contractions and, thus, adhere to the twin forces of “condensation” ("gravitational attraction”) and repulsion (“explosion”). (7)
1. Galaxies with the greatest distances would, Hoyle writes, “have speeds of recession exceeding that of light.” Light from these receding, most distant galaxies “never reaches at all because its path stretches faster than the light can make progress. This is what is meant by saying that the speed of recession exceeds the velocity of light.”
2. “The interstellar gas is certainly extremely rarefied. On an average over the whole Galaxy a large matchbox full of it would contain only about 10,000 atoms. This may be compared with the material in a star, like the Sun where on the average a matchbox full would contain about a hundred million million million million atoms. Yet, in spite of this enormous difference in density, the total quantity of material comprising the whole interstellar gas seems to be greater than the material in all the stars put together.” Also, when Hoyle writes that gravitational effects occur only when the distance between two or more bodies is not too great, is he suggesting that it is this distance factor that releases bodies from their mutual gravitational effects, and thus, allows “repelling” (a movement away) to emerge as the dominant, free force?
3. When he writes that inside of stars, hydrogen is being steadily converted into helium throughout the Universe and this conversion is a one-way process - that is to say, hydrogen cannot be produced in any appreciable quantity through the breakdown of the other elements,” I think he is saying that in the big bang scenario, this occurs one-time only in star formation (and collections of stars in galaxies), and that as galaxies expand into the cosmic void, hydrogen disappears, which is contrary to what Hoyle sees as hydrogen’s presence everywhere.
4. “[In] some of these theories the Universe comes out to be younger than our own Galaxy.” This is generally regarded as incorrect.
5. “Another serious difficulty arises when we try to reconcile the idea of an explosion with the requirement that the galaxies have condensed out of diffuse background material. The two concepts of explosion and condensation are obviously contradictory, and it is easy to show, if you postulate an explosion of sufficient violence to explain the expansion of the Universe, that condensations looking at all like the galaxies could never have been formed.”
6. When Hoyle writes of the solar corona and galactic arms of spiral galaxies, it’s almost as if he is saying that these are illustrations of interstellar matter flowing in or with spacetime toward the gravitational center. The sun’s atmosphere, he says, is divided into two parts. The outer part is the corona, with up to five million miles long “streamers” of “captured interstellar gas falling into the sun,” in a process called tunneling. Tunneling occurs when a star moves through concentrations of interstellar gas and “the gravitational field of the star pulls in gas from far and wide, and as the star moves through the gas it sweeps up the material lying in a huge tunnel,” and “the slower motion of the star through the gas, the more gas it picks up.” Regarding the spiral arms of a galaxy, Hoyle wonders whether these “patterns are connected to the tunneling process” discussed in connection with stars. Though he does not say this, it does suggest a new way to look at spiral arms, with the arms being constituted with vast quantities of energy and matter, flowing in or with spacetime toward the galaxy’s gravitational center (black hole).
7. The balance between condensation-contraction and explosion-expansion is critical for Hoyle. The latter is what counters the former (and, thus, stops solar contraction) in star formation: “As a condensation shrinks, its internal temperature rises, and when this becomes sufficiently high, energy begins to be generated in the interior.”
As with a river analogy, water continually moves downstream, but the overall pattern remains. The problem with this analogy is that there is an ocean at the endpoint and a head water at the beginning, but with Hoyle’s model, there is neither. Hoyle’s response seems to be that, respectively, galaxies disappear beyond the observable horizon of the expanding universe (1) and that “created material…does not come from anything. Material simply appears - it is created.” This sounds like Einstein’s conversion of pure energy into matter (mass energy), but it does beg the question of why this should be so. In elaborating, Hoyle seems to be alluding to the presence of dark energy and dark matter before perhaps these terms were coined, when he discusses the “general background material” that fills space, “where the average density is so low that a pint measure would contain only about one atom.” This general background material thus becomes the repelling force that pushes the universe outward. (2) “The crucial consequence to be drawn from this new cosmological development,” he writes, “is that it is the interstellar gas, not the stars, that rule the Galaxy. It controls the motions of the stars.” Then he adds, “and just as it is the interstellar gas that controls the situation inside our Galaxy, so it is the background material that controls the universe as a whole. Moreover, the created material also supplies unending quantities of atomic energy, since by arranging that newly created material should be composed of hydrogen we explain why in spite of the fact that hydrogen is being consumed in huge quantities in the stars, the Universe is nevertheless observed to be overwhelmingly composed of it.” This background material steadily supplies the stuff of star formation and, via irregularities in the background material” produced by “the gravitational effect of the galaxies themselves, (new) galaxies are continuously formed by collections of condensed matter and energy.
The big-bang theory is the competitor cosmic model to Hoyle’s steady-state model. For Hoyle, the big bang (his characterization of it at the time) theory suggested a Genesis-Creator, which was perhaps one reason he saw it as pseudo-science, but he discounted it for scientific reasons as well. For one thing, the big bang put “the basic assumption out of sight where it can never be challenged by a direct appeal to observation,” as opposed to the data that he used that can, he believed, readily account for the steady-state notion. Also, he discounts the big bang because, in the outward flow of the matter-energy, hydrogen, the basic stuff of the cosmos, would dissipate as opposed to his theory where it is steadily converted into helium throughout the cosmos via the continuous creation process. (3) Also, the age of the universe, he says, is younger than that of the Milky Way galaxy. (4) And Hoyle believed that the big bang idea is inconsistent with two contradictory forces: that of condensation via gravity on the one hand and the contrary force of outward repelling (expansion) on the other. (5) In Hoyle’s view, with the expansion of the universe under the big bang, there would be the breaking of the gravitational bonds with distance, with gravity thus becoming less and less a factor in the overall cosmic structure.
The big bang scenario is the prevailing view these days and Hoyle’s theory has fallen into disfavor. What is missing in Hoyle’s discussion is how Einstein’s theory might fit into the picture that he, Hoyle, presents. (6) Hoyle’s model comes across as a conveyor belt, with a huge gap about what happens on the underside. Per Einstein, might there be an overall spacetime curvature that affects the movement of galaxies so that, instead of moving into the void, their continual movement around spacetime moves in a circular way, to a returning point that, in effect, becomes Hoyle’s new beginning (“continuous creation”)? This alternative scenario, interestingly, would also be compatible with the big bang model as the return around curved spacetime could also arrive back at a condensed state (Big Crunch) that might, again and again, result in a series of cosmic ages of big bang expansions and contractions and, thus, adhere to the twin forces of “condensation” ("gravitational attraction”) and repulsion (“explosion”). (7)
1. Galaxies with the greatest distances would, Hoyle writes, “have speeds of recession exceeding that of light.” Light from these receding, most distant galaxies “never reaches at all because its path stretches faster than the light can make progress. This is what is meant by saying that the speed of recession exceeds the velocity of light.”
2. “The interstellar gas is certainly extremely rarefied. On an average over the whole Galaxy a large matchbox full of it would contain only about 10,000 atoms. This may be compared with the material in a star, like the Sun where on the average a matchbox full would contain about a hundred million million million million atoms. Yet, in spite of this enormous difference in density, the total quantity of material comprising the whole interstellar gas seems to be greater than the material in all the stars put together.” Also, when Hoyle writes that gravitational effects occur only when the distance between two or more bodies is not too great, is he suggesting that it is this distance factor that releases bodies from their mutual gravitational effects, and thus, allows “repelling” (a movement away) to emerge as the dominant, free force?
3. When he writes that inside of stars, hydrogen is being steadily converted into helium throughout the Universe and this conversion is a one-way process - that is to say, hydrogen cannot be produced in any appreciable quantity through the breakdown of the other elements,” I think he is saying that in the big bang scenario, this occurs one-time only in star formation (and collections of stars in galaxies), and that as galaxies expand into the cosmic void, hydrogen disappears, which is contrary to what Hoyle sees as hydrogen’s presence everywhere.
4. “[In] some of these theories the Universe comes out to be younger than our own Galaxy.” This is generally regarded as incorrect.
5. “Another serious difficulty arises when we try to reconcile the idea of an explosion with the requirement that the galaxies have condensed out of diffuse background material. The two concepts of explosion and condensation are obviously contradictory, and it is easy to show, if you postulate an explosion of sufficient violence to explain the expansion of the Universe, that condensations looking at all like the galaxies could never have been formed.”
6. When Hoyle writes of the solar corona and galactic arms of spiral galaxies, it’s almost as if he is saying that these are illustrations of interstellar matter flowing in or with spacetime toward the gravitational center. The sun’s atmosphere, he says, is divided into two parts. The outer part is the corona, with up to five million miles long “streamers” of “captured interstellar gas falling into the sun,” in a process called tunneling. Tunneling occurs when a star moves through concentrations of interstellar gas and “the gravitational field of the star pulls in gas from far and wide, and as the star moves through the gas it sweeps up the material lying in a huge tunnel,” and “the slower motion of the star through the gas, the more gas it picks up.” Regarding the spiral arms of a galaxy, Hoyle wonders whether these “patterns are connected to the tunneling process” discussed in connection with stars. Though he does not say this, it does suggest a new way to look at spiral arms, with the arms being constituted with vast quantities of energy and matter, flowing in or with spacetime toward the galaxy’s gravitational center (black hole).
7. The balance between condensation-contraction and explosion-expansion is critical for Hoyle. The latter is what counters the former (and, thus, stops solar contraction) in star formation: “As a condensation shrinks, its internal temperature rises, and when this becomes sufficiently high, energy begins to be generated in the interior.”
July 14, 2010
I believe I read this in Norway at about the same time I read a similar book by George Gamow, my interest in cosmology being very strong in elementary school. Based on popular BBC-radio lectures, the book was easy to understand.
March 23, 2020
This is the first book in a collection I’ve accumulated since completing Udemy’s “Astronomy: State of the Art” online course. The publication dates are roughly every ten years. The purpose of reading these books is to gain further understanding of Astronomy and the evolution of Cosmology since 1950.
Though a bit dated (at the time of publication Earth had yet to be photographed in full) “The Nature of the Universe” is a nice primer on the field. Hoyle, an outspoken mathematician of his day, gives a general overview of the birth of the sun, planet formation, dust-to-dust evolution of stars, the Milky Way Galaxy and the Observable Universe.
There are two sections of photographs taken from Mt. Wilson, Palomar and Yerkes observatories; grainy black and white images of the solar system and deep space objects. Among them is a partial image of the earth captured by a “Rocket-Camera”.
Hoyle puts forth some interesting theories. Such as; the sun had a companion star that exploded long ago. Large primordial planets formed from the ejected material, but then further broke up into the known planets. He speculates the remains of the partner star are still floating around somewhere. Could this be the 9th Planet, Planet X or Niburu?
He also speculates that the sun refuels while tunneling through massive clouds of hydrogen, causing it to burn brighter at times.
Also, Hoyle theorizes that one atom of Hydrogen is created yearly in a volume of space comparable to the size of a medium sized skyscraper. In turn, this continuous creation of matter is the life blood of the universe. He states, “with continuous creation, the universe has an infinite future in which all of its present day large-scale features will be preserved.”
In the final chapter, Hoyle share’s some philosophical wanderings on the direction of science. He states governments in any form will suppress knowledge. He also questions whether or not a person’s mind will continue to exist after their physical death.
Reading the work of Hoyle is like imbibing the poetry of a great philosopher- his prose just flows. It should be noted that Hoyle poses four questions on the back of the book. By the end of the book, these questions have all been satisfactory answered.
Though a bit dated (at the time of publication Earth had yet to be photographed in full) “The Nature of the Universe” is a nice primer on the field. Hoyle, an outspoken mathematician of his day, gives a general overview of the birth of the sun, planet formation, dust-to-dust evolution of stars, the Milky Way Galaxy and the Observable Universe.
There are two sections of photographs taken from Mt. Wilson, Palomar and Yerkes observatories; grainy black and white images of the solar system and deep space objects. Among them is a partial image of the earth captured by a “Rocket-Camera”.
Hoyle puts forth some interesting theories. Such as; the sun had a companion star that exploded long ago. Large primordial planets formed from the ejected material, but then further broke up into the known planets. He speculates the remains of the partner star are still floating around somewhere. Could this be the 9th Planet, Planet X or Niburu?
He also speculates that the sun refuels while tunneling through massive clouds of hydrogen, causing it to burn brighter at times.
Also, Hoyle theorizes that one atom of Hydrogen is created yearly in a volume of space comparable to the size of a medium sized skyscraper. In turn, this continuous creation of matter is the life blood of the universe. He states, “with continuous creation, the universe has an infinite future in which all of its present day large-scale features will be preserved.”
In the final chapter, Hoyle share’s some philosophical wanderings on the direction of science. He states governments in any form will suppress knowledge. He also questions whether or not a person’s mind will continue to exist after their physical death.
Reading the work of Hoyle is like imbibing the poetry of a great philosopher- his prose just flows. It should be noted that Hoyle poses four questions on the back of the book. By the end of the book, these questions have all been satisfactory answered.
May 18, 2023
The art of science couldn’t be more evident than it is in this book.
October 13, 2024
livros científicos e a sua natureza poética não óbvia, lindo porém levemente chato.
January 21, 2026
Obviously dated, but it's quite nice to read about cosmological theories and realise "oh, no, that's known to be quite wrong now".
December 29, 2025
One of my favorite books when I was a kid. I remember truly cherishing those eight skimpy pages of photos! I even cut up a grocery bag and concocted a book cover for it (since my copy didn't have one) and lettered the title and author onto it in calligraphic fashion.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews