The cosmological revolution of 1993 ended before it began. In The Astrophysical
Journal, one of the most prestigious publications in their field, three prominent theorists presented an alternative to the Big Bang, the creation myth that has dominated cosmology since the 1960s. The
Geoffrey and Margaret Burbidge on the beach near their home in La Jolla, California. They believe that galaxies like the ones in Stephan's Quintet, superimposed behind them, beget other galaxies.
reaction of their peers wasn't antagonistic. It wasn't even argumentative. It was worse—so dismissive that the new theory might as well not have existed at all.
Geoffrey Burbidge was one of the authors of that paper, and he still rages at the response. "Do we know all the laws of physics?" he asks, sitting in his office at the University of California at San Diego. "Apparently so!" Just down the hall, Eleanor Margaret Burbidge, his wife for ...
