I do not believe that any physicist who examined the evidence could fail to draw the inference that the laws of nuclear physics have been deliberately designed with regard to the consequences they produce inside stars. Fred Hoyle
Perhaps like me you grew up with the notion that the whole of the matter in the universe was created in one Big Bang at a particular time in the remote past. What I’m now going to tell you is that this is wrong. Fred Hoyle, radio broadcast
This Big Bang assumption is much the less palatable of the two. For it’s an irrational process that can’t be described in scientific terms. On philosophical grounds too I can’t see any good reason for preferring the Big Bang idea ... It can never be challenged by a direct appeal to observation. Fred Hoyle, radio broadcast 1950, The Nature of the Universe
As you probably know there are two forms of cosmology: what has been spoken of as the Big Bang and the Steady State. Fred Hoyle, The Cosmologists BBC 1963
But they don’t give any physical description of what causes them to begin ... The universe itself didn’t have to have a beginning. ibid.
In the beginning I thought this was pretty bad for the theory ... It’s a completely open question today I believe whether as to whether this background really comes from the general universe or whether it comes from sources in the general manner of radio-astronomy. Fred Hoyle, The Violent Universe, BBC 1969
The entire universe started off as a hot fireball and it cooled down, and after about half a billion years our universe entered a literal dark age. The universe stayed dark until the first stars formed and lit it up again. Professor Martin Rees
Telescopes are in some ways like time machines. They reveal galaxies so far away that their light has taken billions of years to reach us. We in astronomy have an advantage in studying the universe, in that we can actually see the past.
We owe our existence to stars, because they make the atoms of which we are formed. So if you are romantic you can say we are literally star-stuff. If you’re less romantic you can say we’re the nuclear waste from the fuel that makes stars shine.
We’ve made so many advances in our understanding. A few centuries ago, the pioneer navigators learnt the size and shape of our Earth, and the layout of the continents. We are now just learning the dimensions and ingredients of our entire cosmos, and can at last make some sense of our cosmic habitat. Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal
One of the greatest shocks in the world of cosmology just in the last few years has been the realisation that our universe is accelerating. Professor Michio Kaku
The betting is, the universe will die in ice. Michio Kaku
The universe seems to be careening out of control. This expansion is accelerating. It’s kicking in once again. Michio Kaku
The fundamental problem of cosmology is that the laws of physics as we know them break down at the instant of the Big Bang. Well, some people say, What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with having the laws of physics collapse? For a physicist this is a disaster! All our lives we’ve dedicated to the proposition that the universe obeys noble laws. Laws that can be written down in the language of mathematics. And here we have the centrepiece of the universe itself – a centrepiece – beyond physical law. Michio Kaku
The cosmic microwave background is the echo of creation itself. It’s the embers, the afterglow of the original shock-wave that created the universe. If we had microwave eyes, eyes that could see microwave radiation, then every night we would see the Big Bang coming out. Looking at the heavens, we would actually see an explosion … The discovery of the microwave background radiation ranks as one of the greatest discoveries in all of science. Michio Kaku
It was like Christmas tree lights turning on. The universe began to light up in all directions. Until you form the beautiful mosaic we now see today. Professor Lawrence Krauss
The whole thing is held together by entities which we don’t know exist at all and they have no real physical basis. Professor Mike Disney
The question that’s been really exciting me is whether the universe will last for ever ... or will some day come to an end. Dr Saul Perlmutter, Lawrence Berkeley Lab
The knowledge that the atoms that comprise life on earth – the atoms that make up the human body – are traceable to the crucibles that cooked light elements into heavy elements in their core under extreme temperatures and pressures. These stars – the high mass ones among them – went unstable in their later years – they collapsed and then exploded – scattering their enriched guts across the galaxy – guts made of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and all the fundamental ingredients of life itself. These ingredients become part of gas clouds that condense, collapse, form the next generation of solar systems - stars with orbiting planets. And those planets now have the ingredients for life itself. So that when I look up at the night sky, and I know that yes we are part of this universe, we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up – many people feel small, ’cause they’re small and the universe is big. But I feel big because my atoms came from those stars. Neil deGrasse Tyson
The extraordinary thing is not that there are laws but that we can understand them. Why should we be able to understand them? Dr David Deutsch
What a wonderful and amazing Scheme have we here of the magnificent Vastness of the Universe! So many Suns, so many Earths, and every one of them stock’d with so many Herbs, Trees and Animals, and adorn’d with so many Seas and Mountains! And how must our wonder and admiration be increased when we consider the prodigious distance and multitude of the Stars? Christiaan Huygens, Cosmotheoros II
What came first, the chicken or the egg? Did the universe have a beginning? And if so, what happened before then? Where did the Universe come from? And where is it going? Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, TV 1991
An expanding universe does not preclude a creator but it does place limits on when he might have carried out his job. ibid.
The universe has two possible destinies: it may continue to expand for ever, or it may re-collapse and come to an end at the Big Crunch. It would rather be like the Big Bang but in reverse. ibid.
Where do we come from? How did the universe begin? Why is the universe the way it is? Where are we going? Stephen Hawking’s Universe: Seeing is Believing, BBC 2002
That galaxies were racing apart meant one thing: the universe is expanding ... When George Lemaitre heard of Hubble’s claim he knew this was the truth Lemaitre had been waiting for. Stephen Hawking’s Universe: In the Beginning
There are two possibilities: if there is only a fairly small amount of dark matter, the universe will continue to expand for ever, getting colder and colder, and more and more empty; on the other hand, if there’s a lot of dark matter, gravity will slow down the expansion of the universe, and stop it eventually. Then the universe will begin to contract and will end up in the Big Crunch like the Big Bang in reverse. Stephen Hawking’s Universe: On the Dark Side
If the universe continues to expand for ever, everything will burn out and decay. The amount of matter we observe in the stars and gas clouds is only about 10% of what is required to stop the expansion of the universe and cause it to collapse again. However, there might be other dark matter that we can’t see which will still affect the expansion of the universe. Stephen Hawking
The whole universe is expanding in all directions, getting bigger and bigger like a balloon inflated. Stephen Hawking’s Universe: Into the Universe: The Story of Everything
To work out where the universe came from all we need to do is to stop Time and make it run in reverse. Rewind far enough and everything gets closer together. A lot closer together. All the galaxies, in fact every single thing, converges to a single point – the start of everything 13.7 billion years ago ... A very long time ago, the universe simply burst into existence – an event called the Big Bang. ibid.
The universe simply inflated into existence, unfolding, unfurling, getting bigger and cooler with every passing moment. ibid.
Why is the universe the way it is? Why does it follow rules and laws? Why is there order instead of chaos? Stephen Hawking’s Grand Design: The Key to the Cosmos
Newton realised there was a force at work deep within the fabric of the universe that makes all objects attract each other. ibid.
There’s every reason to expect that in the different big bangs that occur you will have different conditions, different values, for what we call the Fundamental Constants. So the fact that the Constants of Nature are suitable for life which is clearly true we observe may not be a universal fact, may be an accident. Professor Steven Weinberg, interview Professor Richard Dawkins
I am really not impressed with the amount of fine tuning there is, with the exception of this one – dark energy. ibid.
I suspect that at the very beginning of the Big Bang nature was quite simple; and it was only then as the incredible temperature began to cool off that all the rich variety of forces and particles that we know about to today began to appear. Steven Weinberg