Prof. Muni Mahendra Kumar
One of the more recent theories on the beginning of the universe is put forward by Prof. Martin Ryle, Cambridge’s Professor of Radio Astronomy and his five colleagues.[1] These British Scientists claim that they have discovered new facts showing that the universe has a definite beginning. They arrived at the following four conclusions:
- The universe is expanding.
- The matter of the universe of which our earth is only a tiny part, is flying apart with a very high speed and thus a hole has been created at the centre of the universe.
- The universe has a definite beginning. (Some newspapers splashed the history making claim under such headings as “The Bible was Right”. But Prof. Ryle in a press conference, made it clear that though there was a definite beginning, the theories did not fit in with the Biblical idea).
- The universe will not last forever.
The scientists based their theory on years of studying the outer frontiers of the universe with radio telescopes penetrating far beyond the realm of sight. Eight workers at the Mullard Radio Observatory which have taken them, it is thought, 8,000,000,000 light years into space and 8,000,000,000 years back into time.[2]
Prof. Ryle’s theory is quite similar to Lemaitre’s theory. Prof. Ryle also believes that thousands of years ago all the galaxies of the universe were compressed into very much smaller volume that an explosion took place and that since then the parts of the universe have been flying apart.
The team of Prof. Ryle has also found out that the universe has existed since its beginning for 10 billion years.
But they have not mentioned any definite time of its end. They only maintain that one day the universe will definitely cease to exist.
These scientists have also claimed to have disproved the steady-state theory of Prof. Fred Hoyle, which we shall discuss in the next section.
