A previously unknown article by Einstein indicates that in 1931 the physicist was engaged in research into the theory of a stationary universe.
Scientists have found an article by Einstein, written around 1931, in which he considers an idea that is an alternative to the generally accepted theory of the Big Bang.
The Big Bang is a generally accepted cosmological model that describes the early development of the Universe, namely, the beginning of the expansion of the Universe, before which the Universe was in a singular state
The Big Bang theory received its first astronomical confirmation in the 1920s, when the American astronomer Edwin Hubble measured the distance to other galaxies and found that they were moving away from us.
Excerpt from an article by Albert Einstein
© Albert Einstein Archives, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel
The manuscript of Albert Einstein, discovered by scientists, testifies that in 1931 a physicist was researching the theory of a stationary universe.
In cosmology, the theory of a stationary universe is a model developed in 1948 by Fred Hoyle, Thomas Gold, Hermann Bondi and others as an alternative to the Big Bang theory. According to this model, as the universe expands, new matter is constantly created between the scattering galaxies. Thus, the cosmological principle is respected. The model had quite a lot of support among cosmologists in the 50s and 60s, but the discovery of the CMB dramatically reduced the number of its supporters in the late 60s. Now there are practically no supporters of this theory
In the late 1940s, astrophysicist Fred Hoyle suggested that the expansion of the universe has no beginning, it goes on forever and is accompanied by the continuous creation of new particles, from which new galaxies and stars are formed. And thus, the density of matter in the Universe does not change during expansion.
Albert Einstein's manuscript has been in the archives of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for many years. The scanned version of the article, which was posted on the Internet in the public domain, was mistakenly considered a draft of another work of the scientist
Interestingly, the paper, written by Einstein in 1931, resembles the theories that Hoyle defended nearly 20 years later. In Hoyle's theory, the equations of general relativity were modified to allow for the spontaneous emergence of matter. Einstein's manuscript shows that the scientist admitted the possibility of the existence of such a mechanism without changing his theory. However, then, as scientists believe, he found an error in his calculations, in connection with which he abandoned the idea of a stationary universe and never mentioned it anywhere else.