First, the definition of "pun":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pun
The pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play that suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect.[1][2] These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use of homophonic, homographic, metonymic, or metaphorical language. A pun differs from a malapropism in that a malapropism uses an incorrect expression that alludes to another (usually correct) expression, but a pun uses a correct expression that alludes to another (sometimes correct but more often absurdly humorous) expression. Henri Bergson defined a pun as a sentence or utterance in which "the same sentence appears to offer two independent meanings, but it is only an appearance; in reality there are two different sentences made up of different words, but claiming to be one and the same because both have the same sound".[3] Puns may be regarded as in-jokes or idiomatic constructions, given that their usage and meaning are entirely local to a particular language and its culture. For example, "Camping is intense." (in tents)
Puns are used to create humor and sometimes require a large vocabulary to understand. Puns have long been used by comedy writers, such as William Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, and George Carlin. The Roman playwright Plautus is famous for his tendency to make up and change the meaning of words to create puns in Latin.[4]
<snip>
The first pun is based on the fact that some people don't believe the "Theia" theory, for example:
http://sservi.nasa.gov/articles/did-the-moon-form-in-natural-nuclear-explosion/
Did the Moon Form in Natural Nuclear Explosion?
The standard theory of the origin of the Moon is called the giant impact hypothesis. It supposes that early in the Solar System’s history, a massive object smashed into the Earth, cleaving it into two unequal parts. The smaller of these condensed into the Moon.
The best simulations of this process suggest that about 80 percent of Moon ought to have come from the impactor and 20 percent from the Earth.
That’s hard to reconcile with the measured make up of Moon rock, which is almost identical to Earth rock in terms of isotopic content. Some planetary geologists say this could be explained if, soon after the impact, the debris mixed well before forming into solid bodies. But others counter that this might explain the similarity in the isotopic ratios of lighter elements such as oxygen but can’t easily account for the identical ratio of heavier elements such as chromium, neodymium and tungsten.
But there’s another theory called the fission hypothesis that could account for the similar isotopic content. This idea is that the Earth and Moon both formed from a rapidly spinning blob of molten rock. This blob was spinning so rapidly that the force of gravity only just overcame the centrifugal forces at work.
<snip>
Their theory is that the explosion of a natural nuclear georeactor after it became supercritical ejected the material that eventually formed the Moon.
<snip>
One interesting corollary of this discussion centres on the origin of this theory which is credited to George Darwin, son of the more famous member of this family. Not content with settling the debate over the origin of the species, could it be that the Darwin family might eventually account for the origin of the Moon, too?
Ref:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1001.4243: An Alternative Hypothesis For The Origin Of The Moon
So, what do you call people who don't people in Theia? A-Theists!
The second pun is that the collision could be described as a "big bang", which is the term Hoyle used on the BBC to disparagingly describe the Cosmic Egg Theory. Hoyle didn't believe it because it conflicted with his dogmatic atheist religious beliefs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Hoyle#Rejection_of_the_Big_Bang
Sir Fred Hoyle FRS (24 June 1915 – 20 August 2001)[1] was an English astronomer noted primarily for the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis and his often controversial stances on other cosmological and scientific matters—in particular his rejection of the "Big Bang" theory, a term originally coined by him on BBC radio.
<snip>
Rejection of the Big Bang
While having no argument with the Lemaître theory (later confirmed by Edwin Hubble's observations) that the universe was expanding, Hoyle disagreed on its interpretation. He found the idea that the universe had a beginning to be pseudoscience, resembling arguments for a creator, "for it's an irrational process, and can't be described in scientific terms" (see Kalam cosmological argument).[17] Instead, Hoyle, along with Thomas Gold and Hermann Bondi (with whom he had worked on radar in World War II), in 1948 began to argue for the universe as being in a "steady state" and formulated their steady state theory. The theory tried to explain how the universe could be eternal and essentially unchanging while still having the galaxies we observe moving away from each other. The theory hinged on the creation of matter between galaxies over time, so that even though galaxies get further apart, new ones that develop between them fill the space they leave. The resulting universe is in a "steady state" in the same manner that a flowing river is - the individual water molecules are moving away but the overall river remains the same.
The theory was one alternative to the Big Bang which agreed with key observations of the day, namely Hubble's red shift observations, and Hoyle was a strong critic of the Big Bang. He is responsible for coining the term "Big Bang" on BBC radio's Third Programme broadcast at 1830 GMT on 28 March 1949. It was popularly reported by George Gamov and his opponents that Hoyle intended to be pejorative, and the script from which he read aloud was interpreted by his opponents to be "vain, one-sided, insulting, not worthy of the BBC".[18] Hoyle explicitly denied that he was being insulting and said it was just a striking image meant to emphasize the difference between the two theories for the radio audience.[19]
<snip>
The Big Bang Theory was discovered by an astronomer who was also a physicist and Catholic priest:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre
Monseigneur Georges Henri Joseph Édouard Lemaître, (French: [ʒɔʁʒə ləmɛtʁ] ( listen); 17 July 1894 – 20 June 1966) was a Belgian Roman Catholic priest, astronomer and professor of physics at the Catholic University of Leuven.[1] He was the first known academic to propose the theory of the expansion of the Universe, widely misattributed to Edwin Hubble.[2][3] He was also the first to derive what is now known as Hubble's law and made the first estimation of what is now called the Hubble constant, which he published in 1927, two years before Hubble's article.[4][5][6][7] Lemaître also proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe, which he called his 'hypothesis of the primeval atom or the "Cosmic Egg"'.[8]
<snip>
In 1930, Eddington published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society a long commentary on Lemaître's 1927 article, in which he described the latter as a "brilliant solution" to the outstanding problems of cosmology.[13] The original paper was published in an abbreviated English translation in 1931, along with a sequel by Lemaître responding to Eddington's comments.[14] Lemaître was then invited to London in order to take part in a meeting of the British Association on the relation between the physical Universe and spirituality. There he proposed that the Universe expanded from an initial point, which he called the "Primeval Atom" and developed in a report published in Nature.[15] Lemaître himself also described his theory as "the Cosmic Egg exploding at the moment of the creation"; it became better known as the "Big Bang theory," a pejorative term coined during a BBC radio broadcast by Fred Hoyle who was an obstinate proponent of the steady state universe, even until his death in 2001.
This proposal met with skepticism from his fellow scientists at the time. Eddington found Lemaître's notion unpleasant. Einstein found it suspect because he deemed it unjustifiable from a physical point of view. On the other hand, Einstein encouraged Lemaître to look into the possibility of models of non-isotropic expansion, so it is clear he was not altogether dismissive of the concept. He also appreciated Lemaître's argument that a static-Einstein model of the universe could not be sustained indefinitely into the past.
<snip>
So Einstein and Hoyle both got it wrong. Einstein eventually admitted he was wrong, but Hoyle never did.
= new reply since forum marked as read
