Word: forms
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Dates: during 1950-1950
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...either time or space It is hard to start describing such an endless, begmnmgless object. One way is to imagine all of space filled uniformly with very thin hydrogen, simplest and lightest of the elements. Such a uniform gas is gravitationally unstable." Its atoms attract one another and gradually form into clouds, rather as a film of water on glass gathers into drops. The clouds, cruising through space for billions of years eventually crowd together in enormous gaseous masses that weigh as much as billions of great stars...
Hoyle, working on the same problem, approached it from the other end. In calculating how galaxies form, he assumed that all of space is filled with very thin hydrogen, about one atom per cubic inch. This gas is depleted, of course, when galaxies condense from it. But Hoyle was convinced that galaxies are forming continuously. So he calculated how much hydrogen must be supplied to keep up the formation of galaxies. His answer came out very close to the answer of Bondi and Gold. This check convinced both parties that the "continuous creation" of hydrogen in space is an actual...
Hoyle's universe, which will never run down, is being constantly refueled with young, virgin hydrogen. Out of it new galaxies form, and new stars sparkle within them. New supernovae explode. New planets are born, and new life spreads like lively green mold over their fresh surfaces...
More hydrogen keeps appearing to replace that which condenses. Galaxies are never so thick that they clog the universe, for the addition of new hydrogen makes space "stretch" more & more. Adjacent galaxies move apart, and when they have moved enough, new galaxies form out of new hydrogen in the newly stretched space between them...
...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...