Tom Ashbrook at Boston’s WBUR does a terrific job interviewing Neil Turok (Cambridge University) and Alan Guth (MIT) on an issue dear to them both: the Big Bang. Did it occur as advertised, or are new ways of looking at the question through the lens of string theory changing everything? How has the inflation model developed over the years, and did the Big Bang mark the beginning of time? Here’s an interview excerpt from Turok:

“I think the challenge we’re raising is that the usual picture of the Big Bang is based on an assumption which is that time, space, matter, energy, everything began at the Big Bang. And that assumption was made in the 60s when people got the first strong observational evidence that the Big Bang happened. But it’s really just an assumption and our point of view has come out of new development in physics which are enabling us to describe the behaviour of matter in very extreme conditions such as were present around the Bang. And what we’re seeing is that the Big Bang doesn’t have to be the beginning of time. It’s perfectly possible that the Big Bang was just a violent event in a pre-existing universe.”

This is lively and controversial stuff indeed, and I’ve seldom heard the issues laid out so clearly. The entire, hour-long interview is available here and is well worth your time. Barnard College’s Janna Levin also offers valuable insights, and excerpts from her book How the Universe Got Its Spots (Princeton, 2002) and Turok and Paul Steinhardt’s new title Endless Universe (Doubleday, 2007) are available on the site.