Not very long ago, in a manuscript for a novel, I wrote (of scientists, but meant by it boors stinking of self-rectitude) Wait ’til they realise that there wasn’t a Big Bang, and that our particular part of the cosmos looks like it’s expanding outwards, while the real explanation is that everything around it is going in the other direction. Like cancer on an ageing corpse. They won’t say sorry, though, – they’ll just say, “We’re even cleverer now.”