Quasi-Steady-State and Related Cosmological Models: A Historical Review

Abstract

Since the emergence in the late 1960s of the standard hot big-bang theory, cosmology has been dominated by finite-age models. However, the rival view that the universe has existed for an indefinite time has continued to be defended by a minority of researchers. This view has roots far back in history and in the 1950s and 1960s several models were proposed in opposition to the big-bang paradigm. The most important of the alternative models, the steady-state cosmology proposed in 1948, was uniformly expanding rather than exhibiting a cyclical behaviour. In a much revised version it was developed into the quasi-steady-state cosmological model (QSSC) of the 1990s. From a historical point of view, this model, and a few other related models, can be seen as the latest examples of a tradition in cosmological thought that goes back to ancient Greece. The paper describes the background and development of the QSSC model.