The Big Disappointment
by Mark Wilkinson

Review of The Big Bang - The History of the Universe in 60 Minutes with Simon Singh
Saturday 19 March
Part of Newcastle Science Festival 2005

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Once again I was looking forward to some really informative talks at this year’s science festival, and looking at the guide, this event stood out. Simon Singh, author Fermat’s Last Theorem and The Code Book: The Secret History of Codes and Code Breaking was giving a talk related to his latest book Big Bang. I was amazed that anyone could even attempt to explain the history of the universe in 60 minutes. With this in my mind I went along to the event, hoping to be inspired. How disappointed I was, to find out I was actually sitting in a talk that should have been called ‘the big bang, a history of the history of the big bang’. For a talk that should have included a lot of science it contained a sparse mix of science facts, such as the Doppler effect and roughly with this how old the universe is. However his experiments were interesting: it was great to hear that if you play ‘Led Zeppelin – stairway to heaven’ backwards you hear satanic messages, very weird. However I fail to see the relevance to the big bang. Simon Singh basically summed up all the work that led to the idea of the big bang, which was interesting. It was just a shame that this event was slightly falsely advertised, and I couldn’t help but think it was a sales pitch for his book. He actually never told us a) how did the big bang happen? b) how does it work and most importantly c) what ideas are around about what will happen next; will the universe continue expanding or will there be a ‘big crunch’? He just basically told us who came up with the idea. Like Adam Hart Davies' talk last year I was lead to believe something else by the kind people who run science festival. All in all, this talk was average and not what I was expecting; it’s a shame when you constantly look at your watch!

Mark Wilkinson, March 2005

Simon Singh official website
BBC - History - The Decipherment of Hieroglyphs by Simon Singh
Biography of Simon Singh
Simon Singh in Wikipedia
Interview with Simon Singh by Bryan Alexander
Reviews of Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe by Simon Singh
Simon Singh Takes on the Cosmos Review of Big Bang by William Tucker, March 31, 2005
The Science of Secrecy online companion to the television series presented by Simon Singh
Math, Codes & Quantum States Simon Singh on The Paula Gordon Show
NESTA Profile of Simon Singh
Imperial College London - The Simon Singh Interview

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