1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:02,594 I'm standing at a site of historical scientific significance 2 00:00:02,694 --> 00:00:05,394 and we just got word we'll be joined by two contemporary legends: 3 00:00:05,494 --> 00:00:08,394 professor Thomas Hertog and professor Stephen Hawking. 4 00:00:09,363 --> 00:00:11,054 And it looks like they are going to join us now. 5 00:00:11,194 --> 00:00:13,363 I'm standing outside the Premonstratensian college, 6 00:00:13,463 --> 00:00:16,094 with professor Hertog and professor Hawking, 7 00:00:16,194 --> 00:00:18,474 which used to house the office of Georges Lemaître. 8 00:00:18,574 --> 00:00:21,194 Welcome to the birthplace of the Big Bang, 9 00:00:21,294 --> 00:00:23,494 dear friends, Stephen. 10 00:00:23,594 --> 00:00:26,094 Well, birthplace... This is the place 11 00:00:26,194 --> 00:00:31,494 where Georges Lemaître conceived of the notion 12 00:00:31,594 --> 00:00:36,907 that our universe expands, that our universe is in evolution. 13 00:00:37,007 --> 00:00:39,799 Georges Lemaître grew up in the south of Belgium. 14 00:00:39,899 --> 00:00:42,594 Unfortunately, the First World War intervened 15 00:00:42,694 --> 00:00:48,100 and he joined the Belgian army to defend his country. 16 00:00:48,430 --> 00:00:52,391 But after the First World War, he studied philosophy and then religion 17 00:00:52,491 --> 00:00:55,475 and was ordained as a priest in 1920. 18 00:00:55,575 --> 00:00:58,594 After Cambridge, in 1923, 19 00:00:58,694 --> 00:01:04,514 he went to Harvard College Observatory where he participated 20 00:01:04,614 --> 00:01:09,894 in the famous meeting where Russell announced the result 21 00:01:09,994 --> 00:01:10,910 that the Nebulae 22 00:01:11,010 --> 00:01:13,503 are in fact distant galaxies, far away from us, 23 00:01:13,967 --> 00:01:19,009 and the first evidence of the fact that galaxies were receding from us. 24 00:01:19,280 --> 00:01:24,245 The combination of theory and his exposure to observations, 25 00:01:24,345 --> 00:01:29,145 led Lemaître to abandon the age old idea that 26 00:01:29,245 --> 00:01:34,880 our universe was static and replaced it by an expanding universe 27 00:01:34,980 --> 00:01:40,126 based on relativity and in agreement with observations. 28 00:01:40,226 --> 00:01:46,740 These are Lemaître's first sketches of the Friedmann-Lemaître solution 29 00:01:46,840 --> 00:01:48,329 of Einstein's theory. 30 00:01:48,429 --> 00:01:51,785 And interestingly, Lemaître eventually settled 31 00:01:51,885 --> 00:01:57,246 on what he called ‘the hesitating universe’, which is the one where the universe 32 00:01:57,346 --> 00:02:01,208 slows down for a while and then accelerates again. 33 00:02:01,308 --> 00:02:03,716 This was all happening two years before 34 00:02:04,152 --> 00:02:08,737 Hubble's famous observations with the Mount Wilson telescope 35 00:02:09,186 --> 00:02:15,078 that confirmed the linear distance relation between redshift and distance. 36 00:02:16,615 --> 00:02:20,889 So in short, we're standing here at the birthplace of the Big Bang, 37 00:02:20,989 --> 00:02:24,037 the place where Georges Lemaître first conceived 38 00:02:24,137 --> 00:02:27,021 of the notion of an expanding evolving universe, 39 00:02:28,618 --> 00:02:32,905 through which he laid the foundations of modern cosmology. 40 00:02:33,005 --> 00:02:38,572 The foundations of the work that we here in Leuven, 41 00:02:38,672 --> 00:02:44,130 Stephen and his group in Cambridge are now continuing to advance 42 00:02:44,515 --> 00:02:48,281 in order to ultimately fully understand 43 00:02:48,716 --> 00:02:51,785 why our universe is the way it is and how it emerges 44 00:02:51,885 --> 00:02:58,705 from a more abstract fundamentally quantum-mechanical reality. 45 00:03:00,667 --> 00:03:01,551 Thank you. 46 00:03:01,769 --> 00:03:04,844 Wow! Together with Lemaître, they're truly inspiring!