Space / Cosmology

Still, theorists don't automatically assume, as Geoffrey asserted in a recent paper, that "to learn something new about physics from astronomy" is "anathema."

Beginning in the 1970s, observers reported that the rotation rates of galaxies don't obey the gravitational laws of Newton—a discrepancy theorists fixed by invoking the presence of mysterious "dark matter." Seven years ago, two independent teams of observers found that the expansion of the universe wasn't decelerating, as everyone had assumed, but accelerating. To explain this astonishing result, theorists invoked the presence of an equally mysterious "dark energy." As one cosmologist concluded at a recent conference on dark matter and dark energy, "Folks, we need a new physics."

This could be seen as a hopeful sign that modern cosmology is revealing new aspects of the universe. Geoffrey sees something more worrisome: an upending of the traditional scientific method. In the late 17th century, Isaac Newton helped inaugurate a scientific revolution by taking Galileo's observations of the heavens' motions and expressing them mathematically. Then in the early 20th century, Albert Einstein helped inaugurate a second scientific revolution by reversing that process, taking his own calculations and looking for their physical expression in the heavens. In 1929 Einstein's general theory of relativity provided a theoretical frame for Hubble's discovery of the expanding universe. Later the cosmic microwave background was interpreted within that framework and taken as evidence of the Big Bang. Now physicists are talking about dark matter and dark energy based on a theory whose traces can barely be perceived.

"We don't think science should be done this way," Burbidge, Hoyle, and Narlikar declared in "A Different Approach to Cosmology." Rather than theorize and then observe, they argued, cosmologists should observe and then theorize.

"The present situation in cosmology," Geoffrey says, "is that most people like to believe they know what the skeleton looks like, and they're putting flesh on the bones. And Fred [Hoyle] and I would continuously say, we don't even know what the skeleton looks like. We don't know whether it's got 20 heads instead of one, or 60 arms or legs. It's probable that the universe we live in is not the way I think it is or the way the Big Bang people think it is. In 200 years, somebody is going to say how stupid we were."

He shakes his head. "Who knows?" he says. "Who knows?"

The last streaks of daylight have long since drained from the sky over the Pacific. Outside the restaurant,

floodlights along the beach have snapped on. Newton once likened himself to a boy playing on the shore of science, "whilst the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me." From where the Burbidges sit, they can see the sand and they can even see the surf, but the ocean before them remains as unfathomable as ever.

Margaret says she's tired, and Geoffrey immediately offers to take her home. But before they throw in their napkins, Geoffrey has a final thought—an anecdote, really.

A few years ago, at Geoffrey's request, a historian of astronomy added a mention of the steady state theory to her annual roundup of astronomy news. Then she

added something else: a line saying that opposition to the Big Bang will die out when its opponents do. Geoffrey sighs at the memory and falls uncharacteristically silent. After a moment, he laughs.

"And it's true!" he booms.