Galaxy creation in a non-big-bang universe
pp. 132-143
in: Enno Rudolph, Ion-Olimpiu Stamatescu (eds), Philosophy, mathematics and modern physics, Berlin, Springer, 1994Abstract
The most widely accepted model of the universe today is the Big Bang. The reason most people readily accept this model is that they believe that the recession of the galaxies from us requires the universe to have originated in a single cosmic event. It was this inferred recession of galaxies after all which suggested more than 60 years ago that our universe originated from an earlier, compressed state. But the observations require not just the recession of all galaxies away from our own, they require the recession of all galaxies away from all other galaxies — the space in which the galaxies are imbedded is supposed to be expanding. Stated in this fashion an alternative possibility becomes immediately obvious: The galaxies could be continually created at many points within an expanding space. For example Bondi and Gold1 and Hoyle2 in 1948 postulated continuous creation of hydrogen atoms between the galaxies which kept the density constant (steady state) in an expanding universe. Therefore the creation of all galaxies at a single instant of time, as required by the Big Bang, is not necessarily required by an expanding universe.