Fred Hoyle: Quotes about space

Fred Hoyle was British astronomer. Explore interesting quotes on universe.
Fred Hoyle: 38   quotes 1   like

“We now come to the question of applying the observational tests to earlier theories. These theories were based on the hypothesis that all the matter in the universe was created in one big bang at a particular time in the remote past. It now turns out that… all such theories are in conflict with observational requirements.”

Fred Hoyle

BBC radio broadcast, March 28, 1949. http://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/library/special_collections/hoyle/exhibition/radio/ Reprinted in April 1949 in The Listener, a BBC magazine.

Question , Universe , Time , Past

“Life cannot have had a random beginning … The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in 1040,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup.”

Fred Hoyle

Fred Hoyle and N. Chandra Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1981)

Life , Universe , Chance , Parting

“A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe.”

Fred Hoyle

Arguing that living organisms could not have arisen by chance alone.
The Intelligent Universe (1983), p. 19

Universe , Chance , Flying

“It is in the world of ideas and in the relation of his brain to the universe itself that the superiority of Man lies. The rise of Man may justly be described as an adventure in ideas.”

Fred Hoyle

Frontiers of Astronomy (1955), p. 1

World , Idea , Universe

“There is a coherent plan to the universe, though I don't know what it's a plan for.”

Fred Hoyle

Attributed in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (1999) edited by Elizabeth Knowles and Angela Partington

Universe