Article August 26, 1961 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from Earl L. Douglass

An editorial in The New Daily London, England

It is always dangerous for the layman to intervene in a controversy between distinguished scientists who talk a different language from his own, and we have no intention of trying to sort out the controversy about the origin of the universe which has broken out between [two professors]...

To a mind unversed in the intricacies of astronomy there seems to be one simple question, which we here propose. [One professor] and his colleagues claim that the universe began with a colossal explosion some 10,000 million years ago. But if this was so, what was the origin of the matter which caused the explosion? It must surely have been in existence before the moment at which, as the scientists claim, the universe began.

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