Shortly after NASA’s COBE satellite gave us the most distant images from space in history, Ted Koppel, of NBC’s “Nightline”, questioned Robert Kirshner (chairman of Harvard’s department of astronomy) on the significance of these amazing photographs by asking a question about the beginning of the universe:
TED KOPPEL: The Big Bang theory (says that) something tiny exploded into the reality of everything large that exists in the universe today. Now, how does that work?
ROBERT KIRSHNER: (after a lot of not answering the question)…The basic picture is that the universe that we see today is very old, and had come from a state which was very different than we see around us today.
TED KOPPEL: (not satisfied with Kirshner’s answer, brought it up again at the end of the program) In the 40 or 50 seconds that we have left. Professor Kirshner, you want to try another crack at that first question, how we get everything out of next to nothing?
ROBERT KIRSHNER: No, I don’t think that’s the question I really want to answer. That’s the one I want to evade…
See Michael D. Lemonick, “Echoes of the Big Bang,” Time, May 4, 1992, 62–63; and “ABC News Nightline,” transcript 2850, April 24, 1992; quoted in Bibliotheca Sacra, Volume 149, Number 596, October-December 1992, pgs. 426-427.
