The Nature of the Universe

• Part 1 of a trilogy

A collection of lectures given by Hoyle in the 1950’s at the University of Cambridge.

Fred Hoyle

In just 125 pages Hoyle gives an account of what was known at the time in the world of cosmology.

It was an exciting time, the era of the first large optical telescopes. Radio astronomy too.

By the 1960’s the expansion of the universe had been pretty much universally accepted.

The Hubble relation, whereby the speed of recession of a source increases linearly with the distance of that source was backed by excellent observational evidence.

Nonetheless, Hoyle noted that only a very modest amount of new matter would need to balance the expansion.

He just one new particle per cubic kilometer, per year, would balance the expansion that is observed.

The book is very much worth a read. It is fascinating to note the subjects that are not even mentioned in the book.

Dark matter is not mentioned, as this book was written before the problem with galactic rotation curves.