In the 13th century, Siger of Brabant authored the thesis The Eternity of the World, which argued that there was no first man, and no first specimen of any particular: the physical universe is thus without any first beginning, and therefore eternal. Siger's views were condemned by the pope in 1277. Cosmological expansion was originally discovered through observations by Edwin Hubble. Theoretical calculations also showed that the static universe as modeled by Einstein was unstable. The modern Big Bang theory is one in which the universe has a finite age and has evolved over time through cooling, expansion, and the formation of structures through gravitational collapse. The steady-state model asserts that although the universe is expanding, it nevertheless does not change its appearance over time ; the universe has no beginning and no end. This requires that matter be continually created in order to keep the universe's density from decreasing. Influential papers on steady-state cosmologies were published by Hermann Bondi, Thomas Gold, and Fred Hoyle in 1948. It is now known that Albert Einstein considered a steady-state model of the expanding universe, as indicated in a 1931 manuscript, many years before Hoyle, Bondi and Gold. However, he quickly abandoned the idea.
Problems with the steady-state model began to emerge in the 1950s and 60s, when observations began to support the idea that the universe was in fact changing: bright radio sources were found only at large distances, not in closer galaxies. Whereas the Big Bang theory predicted as much, the steady-state model predicted that such objects would be found throughout the universe, including close to our own galaxy. By 1961, statistical tests based on radio-source surveys had ruled out the steady-state model in the minds of most cosmologists, although some proponents of the steady state insisted that the radio data were suspect.
Cosmic microwave background
For most cosmologists, the definitive refutation of the steady-state model came with the discovery of the cosmic microwave background radiation in 1964, which was predicted by the Big Bang theory. The steady-state model explained microwave background radiation as the result of light from ancient stars that has been scattered by galactic dust. However, the cosmic microwave background level is very even in all directions, making it difficult to explain how it could be generated by numerous point sources and the microwave background radiation shows no evidence of characteristics such as polarization that are normally associated with scattering. Furthermore, its spectrum is so close to that of an ideal black body that it could hardly be formed by the superposition of contributions from a multitude of dust clumps at different temperatures as well as at different redshifts. Steven Weinberg wrote in 1972, Since this discovery, the Big Bang theory has been considered to provide the best explanation of the origin of the universe. In most astrophysical publications, the Big Bang is implicitly accepted and is used as the basis of more complete theories.
Quasi-steady state
Quasi-steady-state cosmology was proposed in 1993 by Fred Hoyle, Geoffrey Burbidge, and Jayant V. Narlikar as a new incarnation of the steady-state ideas meant to explain additional features unaccounted for in the initial proposal. The model suggests pockets of creation occurring over time within the universe, sometimes referred to as minibangs,mini-creation events, or little bangs. After the observation of an accelerating universe, further modifications of the model were made. Astrophysicist and cosmologistNed Wright has pointed out flaws in the model. These first comments were soon rebutted by the proponents. Wright and other mainstream cosmologists reviewing QSS have pointed out new flaws and discrepancies with observations left unexplained by proponents.
