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Cheers & Tuts. For years the theories of the Cambridge men were published piecemeal in the solemn little papers through which cosmologists communicate. They made very little stir. For one thing, English universities shy away from publicity, and Hoyle and Lyttleton were young.
This year the British Broadcasting
Corp. asked Hoyle to give a series of talks about "The New Cosmology" on the BBC's Third Program, aimed at some 300,000 highbrow listeners. In spite of the difficulty of his subject, Hoyle made an extraordinary hit. Audience approval, measured by BBC's sampling system, gave him a record-breaking rating. When the lectures were repeated on the Home Service for 3,000,000 listeners, the middlebrows liked them too. Published in book form, they have sold 60,000 copies, phenomenal for a scientific work.
Applause from professional colleagues was not as loud; there have been more tut-tuts than cheers. Many British astronomers deplore Hoyle as cocky (which he is) and as disrespectful toward his elders (which he also is). Specific objections to the Cambridge theories, however, have been few. The reason, Hoyle says bluntly, is that few astronomers know enough physics and mathematics to understand what he is talking about.
* Hoyle's The Nature of the Universe (Basil Blackwell; 5 shillings), to be published in the J.S. this spring by Harper.
* One lightyear, the distance light travels in a year, equals six trillion miles. † And the earth was without form, and void: and darkness was upon the face of the deep —Genesis 1:2.