His atheism played a major role in his approach to science, priming him to reject the idea that the universe had a beginning. In fact, as we saw, he coined the term “big bang” to ridicule the idea of a cosmic beginning and later developed the steady-state model as an alternative. Unfortunately for Hoyle, after the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR), support for his steady-state model dwindled as more and more astronomers came to accept the big bang theory. Nevertheless, it was not the discovery of the CMBR, but a different discovery that eventually shook Hoyle’s
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