Something Almost Out of Nothing

Abstract

An interesting, frequently overlooked point is the fact that some of the ideas associated with the steady-state cosmology turned out to be longer lived than the theory that produced them. The steady-state theory disappeared from the scientific scene as a serious rival of relativistic cosmology, but years later certain ideas associated with it revived in another form and as it were on a different level, sometimes with the application of different, more sophisticated concepts. The ideas concerned are both the “generation of matter”, as well as the steady state, though not within our own universe but in an infinite set of universes. As we recall, the notion of a multiplicity of universes was put forward by Hoyle in his attempt to salvage the steady-state theory. The new cosmology in which these ideas re-emerged was inflationary cosmology, which appeared in an effort to deal with certain theoretical problems encountered by relativistic cosmology, which was otherwise making dynamic progress.