20 - Revised steady state

Summary

Narlikar and Wickramasinghe’s 1968 version of steady state theory made use of the dust grains hypothesis, while arguing that the precise measurements of the CMB spectral shape deviate from the black body shape. As critics pointed out, an unrealistic consequence of the model (CMB exceeding visible radiation by a factor of 100) was Wickramasinghe’s 1975 version; it included a very detailed account of elongated whiskers as thermalizers that compose cosmic dust. The 1990s version of steady state constructed by a larger group of authors – the usual proponents of the steady state – introduced the discrete creation of matter (“mini bangs”) in the cellular form of observed galactic structures. The motivation was to eliminate the epistemically problematic singularity of the Hot Big Bang, explain creation of matter as an inherent feature of physical laws, and introduce strong gravitational fields of galactic nuclei as the sites of synthesis of atomic nuclei (with a detailed description of the mechanisms of nucleosynthesis). The chapter discusses a number of combinations of steady state, Population III as sources, and dust grain thermalizers devised until early 2000.