Plasma model of microwave background and primordial elements: an alternative to the big bang

Abstract

A plasma model of the origin of the light elements and the microwave background is presented. In contrast to the conventional Big Bang hypothesis, the model assumes that helium, deuterium and the microwave background were all generated by massive stars in the early stages of galaxy formation. The microwave background is scattered and isotropized by multi-GeV electrons trapped in the jets emitted by active galactic nuclei. The model produces reasonable amounts of heavy elements, accurately predicts the gamma-ray background intensity and spectrum, and explains the statistics of quasars, compact and extended radio sources.