The Black Cloud Society into the book. Hoyle was also responsible for the term "Big Bang", though Hoyle himself did not subscribe to the Big Bang theory in favour of his own Steady State Theory. In a plot twist that foreshadows Hoyle's stance on panspermia, the cloud expresses surprise that intelligent life is capable of forming on planets. The novel has a recurrent theme of the duplicity and shallowness of politicians compared with scientists. The Black Cloud The Black Cloud is a science fiction novel by British astrophysicist Fred Hoyle. Published in 1957, the book details the arrival of an enormous cloud of
History of the Big Bang theory of the primeval atom) that the universe began with the "explosion" of the "primeval atom" — what was later called the Big Bang. Lemaître first took cosmic rays to be the remnants of the event, although it is now known that they originate within the local galaxy. Lemaître had to wait until shortly before his death to learn of the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation, the remnant radiation of a dense and hot phase in the early universe. Hubble's Law suggested that the universe was expanding, contradicting the cosmological principle whereby the universe, when viewed on sufficiently large distance