Steady+State+Theory

The Big Bang Theory, an explosion that is said to have created the universe, but answers this simple to such a complicated question is bound to have questions about this theory. An attempt to fill in the holes of The Big Bang Theory was developed by Fred Hoyle (a famous astronomer), Thomas Gold (an Astrophysicist), Hermann Bondi (Mathematician) in the late 1940s. They provided the discover to The Steady State Theory which states that new matter is constantly being created to form new stars and galaxies and has an average density and arrangement of galaxies. As you may or may not know light takes a very long time to travel across the universe or to distant galaxies, which means when we look at distant galaxies we are actually looking back in time! Since The Steady State Theory states that the whole universe has an average density a steady state universe will have no beginning or end in time. This theory is also quite similar with the perfect cosmological principle which states that the universe looks the same everywhere, on a large scale. The Steady State Theory has many similarities with The Chaotic Inflation theory. The Steady State Theory violates The First Law of Thermodynamics.

The Steady State Theory had a lot of supporters in the 1950s and 1960s. In the late 1960s the number of supporters started to decrease rapidly. How could the universe constantly be constantly be expanding, having an equal density when there were observations showing that the contents of the universe would thin out. In the 1960s astronauts discovered quasars which are highly luminous cores of galaxies. Because most of these quasars are located far away. Quasars proves that the perfect cosmological principle can't be true. We know that light takes a very long time to go across the universe, so when we look at galaxies very far away, we are actually looking back at time. Since we found quasars in very distant galaxies, quasars prove that galaxies along time ago look very different then the galaxies we have today. This shows that the universe has changed a lot over time. This makes more sense with the Big Bang Theory than the Steady State Theory. The final and most crucial part of the downfall of the Steady State Theory was discovered by radio astrnomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson. Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson in the 1964 discovered cosmic microwave background, which is leftover radiation from the Big Bang. The people who supported the steady state theory had no scientific or reasonable way to explain this radiation that was supposedly left over from the Big Bang. The steady state theory slowly started fading away from the scientific community and so did many of there supporters. In the 1990s the discovery of accelerating galaxies has brought back the interest in the general concept of the Steady State Theory, the accelerating galaxies has also added a lot of uncertainty to the Big Bang Theory.

By: Daniel Kim

Bibliography

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//Steady-State Universe//. 30 May. 2009. PBS 

//Cosmic microwave background radiation.// 31 May 2009. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc 