Lost video of Georges Lemaître, father of the Big Bang theory, recovered

Followers of science historical past can now entry a brand new gem: A 20-minute video interview with the daddy of the Huge Bang principle, Belgian Catholic priest and physicist Georges Lemaître.

The total recording, initially aired in 1964, was considered misplaced—with solely a brief excerpt preserved. In 2022, the 20-minute interview was found within the archives of Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroeporganisatie (VRT), the nationwide public broadcasting community for Belgium’s Flemish group.

Within the video, Lemaître discusses the beginnings of the universe and his “speculation of the primeval atom,” the concept our universe expanded from a single point. This idea, which Lemaître first proposed in 1931, developed into the Huge Bang principle now broadly accepted by cosmologists.

“Of all of the individuals who got here up with the framework of cosmology that we’re working with now, there’s only a few recordings of how they talked about their work,” mentioned Satya Gontcho A Gontcho, a scientist on the Division of Vitality’s Lawrence Berkeley Nationwide Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). “To listen to the turns of phrase and the way issues have been mentioned…It seems like peeking by way of time.”

Gontcho A Gontcho partnered with two researchers on the Vatican Observatory, Jean-Baptiste Kikwaya Eluo and Paul Gabor, to make the Lemaître video extra accessible. The interview was carried out in French and aired with Flemish subtitles. The English translation (led by Gontcho A Gontcho) and French transcription at the moment are accessible in a paper on arXiv, an open-access assortment of scientific articles.

“Lemaître and others gave us the mathematical framework that types the premise of our present efforts to grasp our universe,” mentioned Gontcho A Gontcho, who works on the Darkish Vitality Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). Particularly, scientists need to perceive dark matter, the skeleton of our universe, and dark energy, which is making it increase quicker and quicker.

“Cosmology is attempting to grasp what occurred within the universe’s previous—and for many of us who do observations, which means measuring, very exactly, the speed of acceleration of the universe at totally different moments in time,” Gontcho A Gontcho mentioned. “And should you perceive how the universe has expanded at totally different moments in time, you then’re in a position to slender down what darkish vitality may very well be.”