Astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle was born on this date in 1915. 10 things you might not know about him:
He was born in Bingley in Yorkshire.
His father was a violinist who also worked in the wool trade and had been a machine gunner in the First World War. His mother studied music at the Royal College of Music in London and worked as a cinema pianist.
During WWII, Hoyle worked with the British Admiralty on radar development. After the war he was a lecturer in maths at Cambridge University.
He’s best known as the foremost proponent of the steady-state theory of the universe. This theory holds that the universe is expanding and matter is being continuously created to keep the mean density of matter in space constant.
This is a rival theory to the Big Bang Theory, a term coined by Hoyle on his BBC radio show. Hoyle didn’t agree with this theory of the origins of the universe and Big Bang Theory was actually used as a derision of it. However, proponents of this theory had senses of humour and rather liked the name, and carried on using it.
He had some ideas many would consider wacky today. He claimed that the 1918 flu pandemic, and certain outbreaks of polio and mad cow disease were caused by viruses being brought to Earth in cometary dust, which scientists of the day dismissed. One wonders if, he’d still been alive in 2020, if he would have taken to Twitter to tell us that covid 19 came from outer space!
As a child, he sang in a church choir, but as an adult declared himself an atheist. Even so, he didn’t believe the universe came about by chance. He’s the one who came up with the comparison of pure chance creating the universe as being as likely as "a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein". Only rather than God, he believed a superintelligence had “monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology”.
He wrote a number of books. Some, predictably, about science, but he also wrote fiction including A for Andromeda and The Black Cloud, which may have been inspired by his time working for the radar project during the war. He also wrote an autobiography called The Small World of Fred Hoyle.
After he retired, he moved to the Lake District and enjoyed writing, travel and treks across the moors. The latter proved to be his undoing. When out hiking in Yorkshire in November 1997, he fell down a ravine and broke his shoulder. He was there for 12 hours before a rescue dog found him. His health declined rapidly after that and he died of a stroke in 2001, aged 86.
As well as university buildings and institutes, Hoyle has named for him an Asteroid (8077 Hoyle), a stretch of the A650 dual carriageway in Bingley (Sir Fred Hoyle Way), and a species of Bacteria (Janibacter hoylei).
Beta
(Combat Team Series #2)
Steff was abducted by an evil alien race, the Orbs, at fourteen. Used as a weapon for years, he eventually escapes, but his problems are just beginning. How does a man support himself when his only work experience is a paper round and using an Orb bio-integrated gun?
Warlord is an alien soldier who knows little but war. When the centuries-old conflict which ravaged his planet ends, he seeks out another world where his skills are still relevant. There are always wars on Earth, it seems. However, none of Earth's powerful armies want him.
Natalie has always wanted to visit England and sees a chance to do so while using her martial arts skills, but there are sacrifices she must make in order to fulfil her dream.
Maggie resorted to crime to fund her sister's medical care. She uses her genetic variant abilities to gain access to the rooms of wealthy hotel guests. The Ballards look like rich pickings, but they are not what they seem. When Maggie targets them, little does she know that she is walking into a trap.
Hotel owner Hamilton Lonsdale puts together a combat team to pit against those of other multi-millionaires. He recruits Warlord, Natalie, Maggie and Steff along with a trained gorilla, a probability-altering alien, a stockbroker whose work of art proved to be much more than he'd bargained for, a marketing officer who can create psionic forcefields, a teleporting member of the landed gentry, and a socially awkward fixer. This is Combat Team Beta.
Steff never talks about his time with the Orbs, until he finds a woman who lived through it, too. Steff believes he has finally found happiness, but it is destined to be short-lived. He is left with an unusual legacy which he and Team Beta struggle to comprehend; including why something out there seems determined to destroy it.
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