by A. C. B. Lovell, O.B.E., F.R.S., Professor of Radio Astronomy in the University of Manchester and Director of the Jodrell Bank Experimental Station.

The astronomers' probing of the depths of the universe may soon have reached its limit. When observation reaches out to those immensely distant regions where the speed of recession of the galaxies approaches the speed of light, further penetration becomes impossible. Any scientific explanation of the universe must rely on what can be observed within those limits.
There are at present several theories which can attempt to explain the present state of the universe. The ones that command support among a great many contemporary astronomers are the evolutionary theories. The Abbe Lemaitre, for example, postulates a primeval atom which disintegrated between twenty and sixty thousand million years ago and thus started the process by which the universe evolved to its present state. Speculation about what was before this event takes us beyond the beginning of time, out of physics into metaphysics.
(These lectures will be printed in The Listener)