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You might have heard this one before: astronomer Fred Hoyle coined the phrase 'Big Bang' to make fun of a theory of the Universe's origins that he disliked. Wrong, writes historian Helge Kragh. Hoyle did originate the catchy term - in a 1949 popular-science talk for BBC radio - but it was never intended as ridicule. And most people, including Hoyle, pretty much ignored it for decades afterwards. In 1965, the discovery of the cosmic microwave background signalled the triumph of the theory, 'Big Bang' made it into a New York Times headline, and the term snowballed into the popular lexicon.
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