A short list of the leading
problems faced by the big bang in its struggle for viability as a
theory:
- Static universe models fit the data better
than expanding universe models.
- The microwave "background" makes
more sense as the limiting temperature of space heated by
starlight than as the remnant of a fireball.
- Element abundance predictions using the big
bang require too many adjustable parameters to make them work.
- The universe has too much large scale
structure (interspersed "walls" and voids) to form in a
time as short as 10-20 billion years.
- The average luminosity of quasars must
decrease with time in just the right way so that their mean
apparent brightness is the same at all redshifts, which is
exceedingly unlikely.
- The ages of globular clusters appear older
than the universe.
- The local streaming motions of galaxies are
too high for a finite universe that is supposed to be everywhere
uniform.
- Invisible dark matter of an unknown but
non-baryonic nature must be the dominant ingredient of the entire
universe.
- The most distant galaxies in the Hubble Deep
Field show insufficient evidence of evolution, with some of them
apparently having higher redshifts (z = 6-7) than the faintest
quasars.
- If the open universe we see today is
extrapolated back near the beginning, the ratio of the actual
density of matter in the universe to the critical density must
differ from unity by just a part in 1059.
Any larger deviation would result in a universe already collapsed
on itself or already dissipated.
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