Elementary

“But how could such material possibly be formed?"

“It can be formed only in some such gigantic cosmic body as this, our green system, formed incalculable ages ago, when all the mass comprising it existed as one colossal sun. Picture for yourself the condition in the center of that sun. It has attained the theoretical maximum of temperature – some seventy million of your Centigrade degrees—the electrons have been stripped from the protons until the entire central core is one solid ball of neutronium and can be compressed no more without destruction of the protons themselves. Still the pressure increases. The temperature, already at the theoretical maximum can no longer increase. What happens?”

“Disruption.”

“Precisely. And just at the instant of disruption, during the very instant of generation of the frightful forces that are to hurl suns, planets, and satellites millions of miles out into space—in that instant of time, as a result of those unimaginable temperatures and pressures, the faidon comes into being. It can be formed only by the absolute maximum of temperature and at a pressure which can exist only momentarily, even in the largest conceivable masses.”

                                                           (Skylark Three, Chapter 11, Pages 170-171)

     Chapter 11 of Skylark Three is one of the most fun to read, if only for the sheer artistry of the thing, let alone its over-the-top display of “Super Science” (as it was termed in those days). Seaton and his Norlaminian colleague, in order to make use of the levels of energy necessary to accomplish their work, must make their way into the very heart of the hottest star in the neighborhood, there to mold and fashion an optically perfect lens out of a material Smith had only imagined to exist (but which we now know does in fact exist, deep beneath the surfaces of white dwarf stars). The chapter is chock-a-block with gems such as “Like a welding arc raised to the Nth power those two immeasurable and irresistible forces met exactly in opposition - a meeting of such incredible violence that seismic disturbances occurred throughout the entire mass of that dense, violet-white star. Sunspots of unprecedented size appeared, prominences erupted to hundreds of times their normal distances, and although the two scientists deep in the core of the tormented star were unaware of what was happening upon its surface, convulsion after titanic convulsion wracked the mighty globe and enormous masses of molten and gaseous material were riven from it and hurled far out into space.”

Like I said - fun, right?

          Well. thirteen years after the publication of Skylark Three, British cosmologist Fred Hoyle first proposed a radically new concept in how the universe’s heavy elements came into being. At the time, what would eventually come to be known as the “Big Bang” Theory*** was gaining in popularity among astronomers, but Hoyle remained adamantly opposed to the notion of there having been a beginning to the universe. He countered with a then-plausible alternative explanation of the origin of the cosmos - the Steady State Theory, which assumed an infinitely old universe that remained (on a macro scale) unchanged over time. Basically, said Hoyle, how the universe looks today is how it has always looked, and how it will look forever.

Illustration of galaxies moving away from each other in a Steady State Universe

     But Hoyle had a problem. Where did all the heavy elements that make up the Earth (and a good deal of the rest of the cosmos) come from? The “Big Bangers” simply assumed they were all formed in the initial event that created the universe (and therefore saw no problem). But for the Steady State Theory to be true, some ongoing mechanism, active even today, was required to account for their existence. Hoyle, in collaboration with three other Cambridge physicists in the years leading up to 1957, developed the concept of nucleosynthesis, whereby the existence of “heavy” elements (i.e., everything other than hydrogen, helium, and lithium) could be accounted for by their having been forged in the hearts of long vanished previous generations of stars. According to Hoyle’s calculations, the conditions deep within a star just moments prior to its going supernova were exactly what was required for all the elements heavier than iron to be formed. The exploding star would then seed its galaxy with the materials necessary for rocky planets such as the Earth and for carbon-based lifeforms (such as ourselves) to appear in subsequent generations of star formation.

     Now here’s a bit of Pure Speculation. Fred Hoyle was a known devotee of science fiction in the years when it existed almost exclusively within the lurid covers of pulp magazines such as Amazing Stories or Astounding Science Fiction. He became himself a major contributor to the genre in his later years. (His 1957 novel The Black Cloud is indeed one of the finest works of science fiction ever to be written.) Since Skylark Three was one of the most widely read SF novels of its decade, there can be no doubt that Fred Hoyle had read it and was well familiar with its ideas. And as can be seen in the quotation that heads this posting, Smith had imaginatively proposed an idea remarkably similar to the nucleosynthesis theory propounded by Fred Hoyle, et.al., a quarter century later. Is it possible that Smith may have planted the germ of an idea in the head of Hoyle, who then ran with it and provided the mathematical and observation framework to justify its acceptance?

     And so whatever, Fred Hoyle finds his way into the Pantheon of Mankind’s greatest minds, for his theories about how heavy elements are formed have been now fully accepted by all scientists everywhere, and we have the observational evidence to confirm them. It’s strange to think that it took a radically mistaken idea about how the universe came to be (the Steady State Theory) for this fundamental fact about How the World Works to have been discovered at all. For had not Fred Hoyle been so adamantly opposed to the “Big Bang” theory, it’s entirely possible that no one would have ever bothered to discover just how the various elements that make up the periodic table came to be, because the Big Bang theory required no explanation (and its going-in assumptions just happened to be entirely wrong).

     And I can't help but wonder whether "Doc" Smith had a hand in Hoyle's discovery.

*** Fun Fact: Fred Hoyle is responsible for the Standard Cosmological Model (its official name) being known as the “Big Bang Theory”. On the 28th of March, 1949, he used the expression for the first known time in a discussion on BBC Radio about rival theories concerning the origin of the universe. Contrary to the popular conception that Hoyle was using the term in an insulting manner, the transcript shows that he was merely attempting to make the concept understandable to the radio audience. Unfortunately, the name stuck.