A radical departure from the 'steady state' concept in cosmology

Abstract

The results in this paper are based on an entirely different choice of the undetermined coupling constant f which appears in the theory of creation of matter. Previously f was chosen to make the steady-state expansion rate coincident with the observed expansion rate. Now that we take a much larger value for f, the corresponding steady-state expansion rate is much greater than the observed value. We interpret this difference as showing that we live in a wide, possibly temporary, fluctuation from the steady-state situation. The expansion rate in such a fluctuation follows the Einstein-de Sitter relations. The natural scale set by the new steady-state corresponds to the masses of clusters of galaxies, we obtain 10¹³M_⊙ instead of 10²³M_⊙ for the 'observable universe'. It is suggested that elliptical galaxies were formed early in the development of a fluctuation. Our discussion of high energy phenomena leads to immediate explanations of the energy spectrum of cosmic rays, of the presence of e⁺ in cosmic rays and of the rate of energy production associated with radio sources.