Page "Big Bang" Paragraph 24

In the 1920s and 1930s almost every major cosmologist preferred an eternal steady state Universe, and several complained that the beginning of time implied by the Big Bang imported religious concepts into physics ; this objection was later repeated by supporters of the steady state theory.

This perception was enhanced by the fact that the originator of the Big Bang theory, Monsignor Georges Lemaître, was a Roman Catholic priest.

Arthur Eddington agreed with Aristotle that the universe did not have a beginning in time, viz., that matter is eternal.

A beginning in time was " repugnant " to him.

Lemaître, however, thought thatIf the world has begun with a single quantum, the notions of space and time would altogether fail to have any meaning at the beginning ; they would only begin to have a sensible meaning when the original quantum had been divided into a sufficient number of quanta.

If this suggestion is correct, the beginning of the world happened a little before the beginning of space and time.