Science Fiction & Books and Literature & Science Posted by Oaktown Girl, 07 Jun 2007 04:32 pm

Fred Hoyle

By Jame Killus

Fred Hoyle was born in Yorkshire in 1914 to decidedly middle-class parents (a wool merchant and a teacher). He was probably the most prominent scientist to ever have a significant career as a science fiction writer, having written such books as The Black Cloud and A for Andromeda. In the latter novel, some scientists genetically engineer an alien woman based on DNA coding sequences they receive from a stellar transmission. The book was made into a 7 episode series for the BBC, then the idea was pinched for the movie Species.

Hoyle is popularly known for his coinage of the term “Big Bang” and for his opposition to the Big Bang Hypothesis; he believed in “Continuous Creation” and held to it long after the discovery of cosmic background radiation and the more-or-less complete adoption of the BBH by the entire astronomical community. Not content to be something of a crank on the Big Bang, he also put forth the theory of panspermia as an alternative to terrestrial evolution. Panspermia essentially holds that life first occurred in space, and then came to planets; its strong form holds that evolutionary changes rain down from space as viruses or something similar. It is held in high regard in some Creationist circles, though I have no idea why genetic changes from space viruses are more in keeping with Creationist logic (or lack of it) than terrestrial mutations.

It’s possible that Hoyle’s anti-establishmentarian mind-set cost him the Nobel Prize. Hoyle’s co-worker, William Fowler, won the Nobel in 1963, essentially for confirming Hoyle’s prediction of a resonance level in the carbon nucleus, a prediction that Hoyle made as a result of a problem in nucleosynthesis of heavy elements in stars. (It may be noted that Hoyle made the prediction as part of his program to explain heavy elements as being a natural result of stellar nucleosynthesis, something that was absolutely essential if continuous creation was to be viable).

The problem that Hoyle was working on involved the nuclear fusion of elements past helium. The difficulty is that, if you try to fuse helium, you get beryllium-8, which almost immediately fissions back into two helium nuclei. So helium looks like a dead end. The only way out seemed to be if another helium nucleus hit the Be-8 during its very short lifetime. Unfortunately, calculations showed that the resultant highly energetic carbon-12 nucleus would also break apart. Indeed, the nuclear formation of Be-8 (from a Li-7 plus a proton, say), or C-12 (boron-11 plus a proton) form the basis of proposals for “light fission” nuclear power, because the created nuclei fly apart to He-4, liberating considerable energy.

Hoyle decided that there had to be a “nuclear resonance” in carbon-12 nuclei, that sometimes allowed the stable formation of C-12 from the Be-8 + He-4 reaction. Fowler later measured that resonance and found it to be only a few percent off Hoyle’s calculations.

It was about as daring a prediction as has ever been made in science, combining nuclear physics, astronomy, and the anthropic principle (Hoyle reasoned that he was made of carbon, therefore there must be a way for carbon to be formed), along with the simple bloody-mindedness of trying to support a doomed theory, continuous creation.

Hoyle was eventually knighted, and is doubtless much more famous than his co-workers, or, for that matter, Alpher, Bethe, and Gamov, who formulated the Big Bang hypothesis, but didn’t name it as such. Hoyle also championed Jocelyn Bell, as the real discoverer of pulsars (her Ph.D. advisor was awarded the Nobel), again showing perhaps the effects of not being from quite the right social class for British science.

Of Hoyle’s novels, only The Black Cloud seems to be in print, but many of his others can be found used; I was always fond of October the First Is Too Late. I’d also recommend Element 79, a collection of short stories, for often providing just loopy good fun.

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Responses to “Fred Hoyle”

  1. on 08 Jun 2007 at 10:54 am 1. Sven DiMilo said …

    Very interesting. Right for the wrong reasons–like kissing your sister.
    I remember reading The Black Cloud as an SF-obsessed teen, but as a biologist, I mostly know of Hoyle through his crackpotted ventures into the life sciences. Hoyle was a committed anti-evolutionist, originator of the astoundingly wrongheaded metaphor of a tornado in a junkyard forming an airplane, and also very publicly accused–incorrectly–paleontologists of forging the famous fossil urbird Archaeopteryx. As a biologist, the guy was a good astrnomer.

  2. on 08 Jun 2007 at 1:26 pm 2. Oaktown Girl said …

    Thanks, James. I really enjoyed this, even though I haven’t read any of Mr. Hoyle’s books (or much sci fi at all, in fact). Clearly an interesting fellow with an interesting history. And everything old is new again, isn’t it? What with the anti-evolutionists all amped-up, regrouped, and revamped for the new millennium as they are.

    I especially like this post for introducing me (or re-introducing me, I can’t remember) to about Jocelyn Bell. She’s definitely worth a Google beyond the links above. It’s cool that she’s taken a special interest in teaching students that somehow are outside the traditional mold, just as she was.

  3. on 08 Jun 2007 at 2:46 pm 3. Seattle said …

    My father loved Hoyle. I’m pretty sure I read all his work in my early teens, but I’m embarrassed to say I’m drawing a blank on them. Time to re-read. I’m sure Dad’s still got his original copies too.

  4. on 08 Jun 2007 at 3:27 pm 4. black dog barking said …

    …though I have no idea why genetic changes from space viruses are more in keeping with Creationist logic (or lack of it) than terrestrial mutations.

    The Creationist Universe is an odd place. One has to be willing to stake everything on the unknown and then convince / coerce your neighbors to make the same bet — without admitting at any time that these bets are completely irrelevant to the outcome, however and whenever the unknown becomes known.

    Fervent irrelevance. A highly evolved form of either procrastination or denial.

  5. on 08 Jun 2007 at 3:59 pm 5. Seattle said …

    Well, some say denial is the cradle of civilization… : )

  6. on 08 Jun 2007 at 4:35 pm 6. JP Stormcrow said …

    I vaguely recall Hoyle as being Carl Sagan before Carl Sagan was Carl Sagan.

    However, it was his “747 from a tornado in a junkyard” thought experiment that really got my attention. His real point was a bit more complex and nuanced than either creationists or evolutionists paint it - it was about abiogenesis not evolution per se, but it was still way wrong.

    To me an interesting aspect of the illustration is that, in fact, a 747 did emerge from a junkyard - here “junkyard” = agglomeration of solid matter that was the primordial earth. It just did not take a tornado, but rather the slow “ratchet” of evolution operating over billions of years creating an animal with the means and motive to create the massively “unlikely” ordering of matter that is a 747.

  7. on 08 Jun 2007 at 4:45 pm 7. Oaktown Girl said …

    Black Dog - Fervent irrelevance.

    That’s a good one!

  8. on 08 Jun 2007 at 8:23 pm 8. Heresiarch said …

    I got obsessed with Hoyle’s development of the panspermia idea and read all the books he co-authored with Chandra Wickramasinghe. A great fascinating detective story.

    My interest led me to develop a more comprehensive bio-cosmology — explicated at www.starlarvae.org. Brig Klyce continues to develop Hoyle’s ideas at www.panspermia.org.

    Let the Games Begin! — or at least, continue . . . .

  9. on 09 Jun 2007 at 8:50 am 9. christian h. said …

    Fred Hoyle. I must be the wrong generation, b/c I never heard of him outside the stable universe vs. big bang kerfuffle - where he came away as a bit of a scientific crank in the pro-big bang literature I was reading. Thanks for pointing out his SciFi, I’ll definitely check it out!

    My impression (please correct me) is that the panspermia idea hung around partly because of the inability to produce living organisms from scratch in a lab (I don’t think that failure proves anything at all myself). Plus, a really monumental misunderstanding of the concept of entropy helps… see the 747 - Tornado thing.

  10. on 09 Jun 2007 at 1:59 pm 10. Heresiarch said …

    I think that scientists dismiss panspermia because it’s hard for them, as it is for politicians, to admit that they are wrong about fundamental tenets that they built their careers on.

    The interstellar medium, from which solar systems condense, is hugely rich in organic material. This is so well established that an infall of organic matter from space to kick-start the chemical reactions that led to the first terrestrial cell is generally accepted as a likely scenario.

    The scientific establishment draws the line at the prospect of already-formed bacteria and viruses falling in from space. But that’s just an arbitrary bias, IMHO, a holdover from the days of geocentrism.

  11. on 10 Jun 2007 at 7:40 pm 11. James Killus said …

    My apologies to everyone for missing the discussion. There I was on the campus of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, staying in a dorm, even, and I could not get a network connection. There was a campus-side wi-fi connect to rpi.edu, which none of us alumni could access, and then there were two hot spots that were supposedly public, one at the Sudent Union, so all I’d have had to do was shlep my laptop down the hill, then back up after I was done. But if I were the sort who’d do that, I’d have attended classes more often when I was a student.

    The best extension of Hoyle’s panspermia ideas were probably from William S. Buroughs. He pretty much got the point that none of this was science, so Off to the Races, as it were.

  12. on 11 Jun 2007 at 6:40 am 12. The Constructivist said …

    In lieu of my actual Stephenson post I will mention that the metavirus in Snow Crash may well be a Hoyle allusion. It’s kind of key to the whole Inanna/Garden of Eden/origins of consciousness backstory/symbol. More “later,” as I’ve been saying a lot lately!