Scientist challenges theory of Big Bang

The eminent astrophysicist Prof Geoffrey Burbidge comes to Dublin next month to deliver an Academy Times lecture on the topic, New Ideas in Astronomy. The lecture takes place at Dublin Castle on Tuesday, August 16th, and is free and open to the public.

Burbidge's talk comes during the International Astronomical Union Symposium in Dublin Castle that takes place from August 15th to the 19th. His talk has been organised by The Irish Times and the Royal Irish Academy in association with the International Astronomical Union and Depfa Bank. The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies and University College Dublin are also involved in the talk.

Burbidge, who is based at the University of California, San Diego, is well placed to deliver a talk on new ideas in astronomy given he has been the source of so many.

One of his greatest, achieved in collaboration with his astronomer wife Margaret, nuclear physicist Willy Fowler and astronomer Fred Hoyle in 1957, was a famous paper describing the process that allowed heavy elements from carbon and up to form deep within stars. Before this astronomers couldn't explain how stars could provide the raw materials for the matter that goes into the making of planets and by extension humans.

In a career dating back to the 1950s in England, Burbidge has been at the forefront of astronomical research, often in collaboration with his wife Margaret. Aside from his studies of the origin of the heavy elements, he has looked into the surprising energies of radio sources deep in space and how to measure the mass of galaxies and pursuing the nature of quasars.

His supporters hail him as an "unconventional and original" thinker and detractors as a controversial figure, given his challenging views on cosmology that run counter to current thinking.

He argues that the universe is not in a one-way expansion from a seminal point, a central tenet of the Big Bang theory, but is a natural oscillator, expanding and contracting alternately over time.

He also takes a non-mainstream view of "discordant redshifts", galaxies and quasars that don't seem to conform to the redshift method for measuring distances across the universe. Most cosmologists hold that discordant galaxies occur by chance and conform fully to redshift assumptions.

Burbidge, with others, are of the view that the discordant galaxies are connected, something that would challenge the fundamental Big Bang idea that the universe is expanding, as proven by redshifts.

Prof Burbidge's talk takes place at Dublin Castle's main conference hall at 7.30pm on Tuesday August 16th. The event is free but places must be booked due to limits on space.

Bookings can be made by logging onto the academy's website at www.ria.ie and a limited number of tickets will also be available by phone by dialling the academy at 01-6762570.