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Successes of the Big Bang Model

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The Vindication of the Big Bang
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Abstract

With the demise of the steady state theory in the mid-1960s, the big bang theory became the accepted cosmology. Its success encouraged astronomers, and many were attracted to it. Soon the evidence supporting it was so strong that most astronomers considered it to have a strong foundation. Today, its acceptance rests on five pillars of evidence. The first pillar is Hubble’s observation that galaxies exhibit a redshift—distance relationship. This relationship also gives us the age of the universe, so it is convenient to think of it as the “age of the universe” pillar. One of the strengths of this pillar lies in the fact that the age of the universe can be calculated in three different ways, and all three give roughly the same value.

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© 1993 Barry Parker

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Parker, B. (1993). Successes of the Big Bang Model. In: The Vindication of the Big Bang. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-5980-5_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-5980-5_4

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-306-44469-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-5980-5

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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