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The one-minute script
Here's a fact that surprises people. The idea that the universe is expanding was first published by a Catholic priest.
His name was Georges Lemaître. He was ordained in nineteen twenty-three, in Belgium, and he was also a physicist. In nineteen twenty-seven he published a paper showing that Einstein's equations allowed a universe that grows, and that distant galaxies should be moving away from us at speeds proportional to their distance. Edwin Hubble's famous observations came two years later.
A few years after that, Lemaître proposed that the universe began from a single "primeval atom". That's the idea we now call the Big Bang.
In twenty eighteen the International Astronomical Union recommended renaming Hubble's law the Hubble-Lemaître law.
He saw no war between his collar and his chalkboard. The Catechism puts it simply: truth cannot contradict truth. The same God made the mind that does the maths and the universe it describes.
Fair to the other side
Lemaître himself insisted his theory was physics, not proof of creation, and he was uneasy when, in 1951, Pope Pius XII seemed to tie the Big Bang to Genesis. A fair version of this story keeps that: the point is not that science proves the faith, but that a priest could do first-rate science without any conflict.
Sources
- Georges Lemaître, "Un Univers homogène de masse constante et de rayon croissant", Annales de la Société Scientifique de Bruxelles 47 (1927)
- Edwin Hubble, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 15 (1929)
- International Astronomical Union, 2018 resolution recommending the name Hubble-Lemaître law
- Georges Lemaître, "The beginning of the world from the point of view of quantum theory", Nature 127 (1931)
- Catechism of the Catholic Church 159
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Free to post on your own channels under CC BY-SA 4.0: keep the credit line and the AI disclosure. Suggested caption:
The expanding universe was first published by a Catholic priest, two years before Hubble. Meet Fr Georges Lemaître.
On-screen text: Fr Georges Lemaître (1894 to 1966) · 1927: the expanding universe · 1929: Hubble's observations · 2018: the Hubble-Lemaître law · Catechism 159: "nor can truth ever contradict truth"