1994/07/07 by Craig J. Copi, Craig J Copi, David N. Schramm +1 · 11 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics #Atomic physics #Baryon #Baryonic dark matter #Big Bang (financial markets) #Big Bang nucleosynthesis #Cosmology #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Dark energy #Dark matter #Helium #Hot dark matter #Nuclear physics #Nucleosynthesis #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Physical cosmology #Physics #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Stars #Ultimate fate of the universe #Universe #astro-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1126/science.7809624
published as Science 267 (1995) 192-199 · 21 pages+6 figs, LaTeX(2.09), FERMILAB-Pub-94/174-A, Figures available by anonymous ftp in oddjob.uchicago.edu:/pub/bbnrev/fig?.ps (?=1,2,3,4,5,6) or email from [email protected] REVISIONS include new discussion and a new figure
arxiv created 1994/07/07 · openalex publication_date 1995/01/13 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
For almost 30 years, the predictions of big-bang nucleosynthesis have been used to test the big-bang model to within a fraction of a second of the bang. The agreement between the predicted and observed abundances of deuterium, helium-3, helium-4, and lithium-7 confirms the standard cosmology model and allows accurate determination of the baryon density, between 1.7 x 10(-31) and 4.1 x 10(-31) grams per cubic centimeter (corresponding to about 1 to 15 percent of the critical density). This measurement of the density of ordinary matter is pivotal to the establishment of two dark-matter problems: (i) most of the baryons are dark, and (ii) if the total mass density is greater than about 15 percent of the critical density, as many determinations indicate, the bulk of the dark matter must be "non-baryonic," composed of elementary particles left from the earliest moments.