Sir Fred Hoyle

I got to ask Sir Fred Hoyle, the person who invented the disparaging name “Big Bang”, a question at a lecture he gave at Sydney University in the early eighties. Unfortunately his “Steady State” theory had been rejected by this time and “Big Bang” had caught on. So this talk was on the Panspermia theory that he was then championing with Chandra Wickramasinghe.

He claimed during the lecture that all individual viral infections were the result of viruses arriving directly from space. During the question time I asked him why couldn’t the virus, having replicated in a host, then go on to infect someone else. He said “Could you speak up, I’m monaural”. My friend who was sitting next to me in the lecture muttered to me “That means his brain has turned into blue cheese and dribbled out of one ear.” We were in the Genetics Department and were a bit hostile to his claim that abiogenesis wasn’t possible and to his stated support of intelligent design. He was undeniably a genius however and this had assured that the huge lecture theatre was packed to overflowing.

I asked the question again and his reply was that the viruses could have their genome tagged by the host during replication making them recognised and rejected by the next potential host’s replication mechanism. He was only in his late 60s by this time but didn’t seem to be at or near the top of his game. The sentiment among the biologists in attendance seemed to be that he was backing another theory doomed to failure.

Of course it’s possible that some genetic material may arrive from space, but his extreme view on virus infections didn’t seem necessary or likely. I think it’s now widely accepted that organic molecules can arrive on meteorites but Sir Fred was claiming that fully formed viruses were continually raining down from space, especially when sunspot activity was low. Despite concerted efforts from radical Christians in the intervening years, intelligent design has only lost credibility and support since.