Mr Silk is ( my opinion ) one of the greatest Teachers in the fields of Astrophysics & Cosmology and it's unbelievable how many known Physicists he guided towards academical success as PhD Advisor ( examples Max Tegmark or John D. Barrow )... As an Astrophysics Student a couple years ago I purchased his Book " The Big Bang - Revised and Updated Edition " @ Half Price Books. It was released in 1980 ( 1989 for my revised edition ) and it's still my absolute favorite Book about the Big Bang Theory. It's far ahead of it's time... It's on the level of " The first three minutes " by Steven Weinberg or " The Whole Shebang" by Timothy Ferris. I highly recommend his Book... and also... thanks to the individuals recording and posting his presentations... Thanks.

Great overview for folks new to the field!

Thank you Mr. Silk, great lectures

Excellent lecture. I'm now devoted to Gresham. Thank you!!

This is one of the best talks I have seen in a while and I watch most if not all of them. Thank you for the knowledge!

The Modulation of QM-TIMESPACE that is a self-defining continuous event, certainly has all the characteristics of expansion and emissions from a closed point source, in the same principle as that of stars, but because it's an observation inevitability made inside the event the "view in perspective" is not that of an explosion only, it's the wave-package landscape and echo of apparent probabilities of those wave-package pulses, positioning the observer here-now in the Eternity-now event forever, in constant creation of shifting relative wave-proportions. It's always now, the sum-of-all-histories past, is also the potential possible future from which the current integration of timing duration rates are connected and emitted/reflected in a multi-phase-locked synchronicity of evolving current events, interpreted by our also-included sensory physiology as here-now, forever. Ie the interpretation of the Observable Universe as Big Bang Theory is correct but over simplified and is an example of inadequate substantiation leading to false attribution. Beginning=Ending, Now.

I used to assume the universe could not have been Created, so this stuff used to be far more impressive, since it was basically differentiating between various 'No Creator God' origin stories . . but then I experience some things first-hand that forced me (intellectually speaking) to broaden my thinking to include the possibility that the time/space continuum is actually a sort of stage upon which the God of the Book is playing out a Story that He wishes to happen . . so; It is not impressive to me that some evidence fits with an idea about a universe that just popped into existence, without a serious discussion of what one would expect to see if the universe was Created. With no; "One would not expect to be seeing x, y and z, as we do (and/or the opposite; We would expect to be seeing x,y and z, but are not...), if a hyper intelligent entity or entities Created the universe" discussion, this is all just sophisticated "cherry picking" among a virtually unlimited array of "evidence", to me. When your 'No Creator' idea requires the assumption of zillions of unobserved universes, popping into existence, there is no rational reason to assume any of this origins stuff is truly scientific, as opposed to . . making the 'No God' idea fit, it seems to me.

My brain can't cope with either a steady-state universe or a bigbang. Let alone the idea of multiverses , which sounds to me like the wellknown idea of an infinite stack of turtles carrying the earth on it's back.

From Peoria, I'm pretty sure.

Once upon a time not so long either philosophers would ponder on the eternal imponderables and come up with strange and wonderful theories as to what was exactly what acccoding to their imaginations and people would gape and wander and kowtow to them but today philosophers have all been banished to swamplands on threat of death and mathematicians have taken over doing precisely what the erstwhile philosophers have always doing but with the sole exception that instead of words they use numbers so that people are even more awestruck and grovel to them in their ignorance and great fear

yes, first there was nothing and then it exploded.

There is THE beginning and MY beginning. MY beginning is from my mother and father, the true real creator God in seed wisdom. THE beginning? Nebulous, beyond human understanding. I don't care about THE beginning. I only care about MY beginning, MY parents, MY heart beat, breath and my true Creator God in my cells. I am one with MY creator God in the true real Garden of Eden, Utopia, Heaven on Earth behind the eyes, in my cell with MY creator God.