Pointstart

The Big Bang theory is the foundation of the standard model of cosmology. It explains universal expansion, which was implied by the discovery, beginning in 1912, that the galaxy groups are receding – becomming more distant from us and from each other.

The concept was foreshadowed by Albert Einstein and others, and was formulated in 1927 by Georges Lemaître, priest and professor of astronomy at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium.

If the expansion is extrapolated backward in time, it leads to an initial point-like state of extreme density, a “primeval atom.” The theory was sarcastically dubbed the “big bang” by Fred Hoyle during a 1949 BBC radio broadcast. He was a leading proponent of the rival and now generally doubted steady-state theory.

The term “Big Bang” has the advantage of familiarity: it is known to the public, and conveys a roughly appropriate image. But it was intended as mockery; suggests a caricature like the popping of a paper bag or the firing of a starting gun. And the image is misleading: far from “big,” the phenomenon happened when there was no space and no size; and it was accompanied by no sound, since there was not yet any surrounding medium into which pressure waves could travel.

 

Big Bang Challenge

So in 1993 the Big Bang Challenge was suggested, in a “Focal Point” essay in Sky & Telescope by Timothy Ferris (author of The Whole Shebang), and was conducted by the magazine. The public was invited to suggest better names for the phenomenon. The judges were Ferris, Carl Sagan, and Hugh Downs (newscaster and astronomy enthusiast). The result was almost overwhelming.

In February of 2026, Fred Schaaf (prolific author, and former columnist for the magazine) initiated an email conversation with several of the editors and contributors who had been involved in the Big Bang Challenge; and forwarded it to me in a spirit of “FYI.” For my interest, I extracted the story as coherently as I could from the numerous reminiscences, which, unsurprisingly after three decades, had some uncertainties.

Only later did I learn that I could have spared myself these hours of text-concordance because the story had been told in a 1994 article by Cheryl Beatty and Rick Fienberg. But it is worth a condensed and updated re-telling.

Tens of thousands of postcards poured in; maybe 40,000 or 60,000. Cheryl Beatty compiled the suggestions into an Excel spreadsheet, which was emailed to the judges. They read as much as they could, perhaps all.

Many were repetitious. “Creation” 124 times. Some were funny. “What Happens if I Push This Button?”  One person in Thailand sent dozens of suggestions, all using acronyms. “The Big TOE” (theory of everything).

The judges conferred by phone and email; agreed that they had found no suggestions significantly preferable to the existing term; and recommended “No winner.” The Big Bang Challenge did not achieve its nominal goal, but “was a cool idea” and good publicity for the magazine.

 

Grand Opening

The cards were stored for some time in boxes in a storage room. One of the editors, Alan MacRobert, took a look and by chance found one that “grabbed” him, signed by stand-up comedian George Carlin:

“The Grand Opening.”

“It seemed perfect: The opening of the whole cosmic show. And it began as a momentary tiny opening from, cosmologists were beginning to say, some much larger ‘eternally inflating’ realm… I’ve always hoped someone might call attention to Carlin’s brilliant name.”

Indeed “Grand Opening” evokes not gunfire but the smooth rise of a curtain at the premiere performance of an opera.

Maybe not perfect. The phenomenon can be called “grand” in that word’s extended meaning of “magnificent,” but not its root meaning of “fully grown, adult, mature.”

(Latin grando, stem grandin-, “hailstone,” is not cognate, unfortunately. It would be nice to picture a primeval hailstone.)

There were some other cautions, and the email conversation continued. Fred Schaaf wondered whether a term should be built from roots of Latin or Greek (as in the words inception and genesis) or old Germanic (gap, gape); and should be a noun or a verb?

I thought for a minute.

 

Pointstart

The universe Pointstarted. Cosmic expansion is extrapolated back to the Pointstart. The event was the Pointstart. The place was the Pointstart. The object, Father Lemaître’s primeval atom, was a Pointstart.

The river of time flows from its source (French, “spring,” from Latin surgere, “rise”). A spring is an opening from a vast underground layer, the aquifer, like the pointsourcet opening from a larger realm.

Aquarius, headwater of the constellations

If, as in one version of the theory, expansion ceases and goes into reverse, the universe will fall back in a Big Crunch to its Pointstart – or Pointstop? According to the over-the-top multiverse theories, there are many Pointstarts.

The one-word term seems more efficient than the two-word phrases in accuracy; in evoking the intended picture; in refreshing allusion to the spring from which flows the river of time; in meeting the need for a single word that can be used to refer to both time and position (like other astronomical terms such as equinox, perihelion); and in being usable in any grammatical context, as noun, adjective, or verb.

English has two words start, from separate origins in the proto-language. One, from a root whose meaning was “jump,” gives us the familiar word with two meanings: “make a sudden startled movement,” and “begin.”

The other is an obsolete, perhaps dialectal word for “tail” or “rump,” preserved in the name of a bird, the redstart.

Apply that how you like to the Pointstart.

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