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A History of Ideas: Astronomer Carole Mundell on the Big Bang

How Did Everything Begin?

14/01/2015

Astronomer Carole Mundell on the Big Bang

BBC Radio 4 - A History of Ideas, Astronomer Carole Mundell on the Big Bang

What put the bang in the Big Bang? Can scientists tell us what happened before creation?

What put the bang in the Big Bang? Can our scientists report back from the moment before the dawn of time? Astronomer Carole Mundell finds out.

What put the Bang in the Big Bang?

On the 7th of November 1919 an announcement was made to the great and good of the Royal Society. Photographs from the observations of a solar eclipse had just arrived in London. The images provided the proof of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity.

The astronomer, Carole Mundell explains the significance of that moment and charts the steps that led from there to the generally accepted idea of the origin of our Universe in the energetic burst of the Big Bang.

But what caused the Big Bang and what came before it? Answering one fundamental question immediately threw up the next. With the help of the mathematician, physicist and philosopher of science, Sir Roger Penrose, Carole aims to find out if those are questions mankind can ever answer.

This is part of a week of programmes examining the origins of the Universe.

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