Big Bang Cosmology — the literature

Companion to The Big Bang.  Every source consulted is listed here with what it measured and which way it cuts.  Sources that were worked up and then not used in the article are marked and the reason given, so nothing is quietly dropped.

The raw research dossiers behind this page are in research/ beside the article:  bbn.md (2,156 lines), cmb-evidence.md, model-taxonomy.md, critics-audit.md, ages-structure-baryogenesis.md.  Every quotation in the article was read from downloaded bytes — arXiv API XML, pdftotext output, locally stripped HTML, or a rendered page image checked by eye.  No quotation was established through a summarising page fetch.

How to read an entry

Field definitions

• Verdict — which way the source cuts: for the standard model, against it, mixed, or method (a tool rather than evidence).
• Used — whether the article cites it, and if not, why not.

Standing traps found while building this article

These cost real time and are recorded so nobody repeats them.

• Disney's technical paper is astro-ph/0009020, not gr-qc/0009020. The latter is an unrelated paper on Bianchi I string gravity and downloads cleanly, which makes it a silent trap.
• Hincks et al., arXiv:1803.03277, was withdrawn by its own authors. Its claimed ~5σ relativistic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich detection must never be cited. Any source citing it did not check.
• The creation.com nucleosynthesis critique is by Jonathan Henry, not John Hartnett. Hartnett's own flagship anti-Big-Bang article contains no nucleosynthesis argument; it runs on Richard Lieu.
• The "Nature 346:807" sentence circulating in creationist notes could not be verified after nine routes. The paper is correctly identified (Arp, Burbidge, Hoyle, Narlikar & Wickramasinghe, Nature 346:807-812, 1990) but the quotation was not found in it. Do not print it. A verified equivalent by the same authors exists in A Different Approach to Cosmology (2000).
• Peebles attributes to "McKellar (1941)" a sentence — "which has of course only a very restricted meaning" — that is in neither 1941 McKellar paper. Close in sense to his 1940 hedge, but not the same words.
• Pitrou et al. 2018 exists in two arXiv versions with different numbers. The 2025 v3 revised three Table VIII entries. Cite the published v2 unless deliberately citing the revision.
• The library copy of Hawking's A Brief History of Time is a web rip with fabricated pagination. Never cite a page number from it.
• ADS scans of pre-1997 papers frequently have no OCR text layer, and tesseract destroys superscripts. Several numbers in this article were read off rendered page images by eye for exactly this reason.
• Eddington's "repugnant" sentence is a truncation in almost every apologetics use. The full paragraph is stronger evidence than the short version. See the article's Part 5.

The book that should have been read first

Barnes & Lewis 2020, The Cosmic Revolutionary's Handbook (Or: How to Beat the Big Bang)

Cambridge University Press.  Already in the library as barnes-2020 (EPUB plus a full text extraction with print-page markers).  Read in full after the first draft of the article was written, at Eric's instruction — and it should have been read first.  Two working cosmologists writing a manual for people who want to overthrow the standard model, unusually candid about where it is weak.

What it changed in the article:

• The uniform-shift argument. No material can shift every wavelength by the same factor, because anything that interacts with light must be electrically charged, and charged parts interact with each other and so imprint their own structure on the re-emitted light. This is a physical constraint that rules out most intrinsic-redshift mechanisms before any cosmological test is run. Added to Layer 1.
• Their flat statement that the Big Bang does not predict the CMB temperature — "There is no calculation within the big bang theory that produces the number 2.725 K" — with the structural reason (the temperature falls with time, so "today keeps changing"). This is the article's own concession, made by cosmologists rather than by critics. Added.
• A citation correction. The line "has, of course, only a very restricted meaning" is Gerhard Herzberg's, in his 1950 textbook Molecular Spectra and Molecular Structure p. 496, commenting on McKellar's result. It is not McKellar's. Peebles 2014 attributes it to McKellar, and this project's own CMB dossier flagged that it appears in neither 1941 McKellar paper without being able to place it. Resolved.
• Sandage's own tepid verdict on the Tolman test, and their summary that the model "survives" it but "doesn't pass with flying colours." Added, and it improves the honesty of Layer 1.
• The detachability of the dark sector, in cosmologists' own words, plus "cosmologists would dump the dark components in a moment." Added to the layer table discussion.
• Redshift drift (one part in 10¹³ per day, Sandage 1962, rediscovered by Loeb) and the 1.95 K primordial neutrino background as the two cleanest untested predictions. Added to "What would settle things."
• The planes of satellite galaxies around the Milky Way and Andromeda — a live problem the article had missed, and one Barnes and Lewis concede "was not predicted by any galaxy formation simulation before it was discovered." Added to the dark matter section.
• A three-way split of the redshift-quantisation claim, which the article had flattened into one "dead." The quasar claim is dead; the 72 km/s galaxy-pair claim is irrelevant rather than refuted, because nobody claims homogeneity at one megaparsec; and the Broadhurst 180 Mpc claim "has bite" but has not reappeared in larger surveys. Sharpened.
• The Bulverism passage, in which two mainstream cosmologists refuse to dismiss Russell Humphreys' white-hole cosmology on grounds of religious motivation and test its physics instead — where it fails on an objection first pressed by another young-earth creationist. Added to the closing, because it is the standard this article tries to meet in the other direction.

Verdict: for the standard model, and the single most useful book on this subject for this project's purposes.  Used heavily.

Material read and deliberately not used here, because it belongs to other articles:  their treatment of Humphreys' white hole in detail and Hartnett's critique of it (young-universe cosmologies);  the Lyman-alpha forest as a test of the Arp mechanism (the Doppler-redshift article covers Arp);  the Dirac large-number hypothesis and Dicke's anthropic resolution (fine-tuning);  the R_h = ct linear-expansion model, which Lewis and his students refuted in print (dark matter, dark energy and redshift alternatives);  plasma cosmology / the electric universe;  and Pierre-Marie Robitaille's claim that the CMB is the Earth's oceans, answered by 147 independent measurements of the CMB spectrum from satellites, rockets, balloons, mountain-top sites, the South Pole and a Learjet.

Layer 1 — expansion

Lewis & Brewer 2023, Nature Astronomy 7:1265

Time dilation of (1 + z) detected in 190 quasars monitored for two decades.  Cites López-Corredoira 2017 directly and closes the "quasars show no time dilation" item on his list.  Verdict: for.  Used.

Noterdaeme et al. 2011, A&A 526:L7

T_CMB(z) = (2.725 ± 0.002) × (1+z)^(1−β) with β = −0.007 ± 0.027, from carbon monoxide and neutral carbon excitation in quasar absorbers.  The single most decisive test against a static microwave background.  Verdict: for.  Used.

Riechers et al. 2022, Nature 602:58

Water absorption at z = 6.34 gives 16.4-30.2 K against a predicted 20.0 K.  Verdict: for.  Used.

Sayers et al. 2013, ApJ 778:52

Kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich velocity for MACS J0717.5+3745 sub-cluster B:  +3450 ± 900 km/s.  Clusters are essentially at rest in the microwave background frame.  Verdict: for.  Used.

Etherington 1933, Phil. Mag. 15:761

The reciprocity theorem.  Establishes that the (1+z)⁻⁴ surface-brightness law is a theorem of any metric theory, not a prediction of expansion.  Verdict: method — it disarms an argument both sides misuse.  Used.

Goldhaber et al. 2001; Blondin et al. 2008

Supernova light-curve and spectral time dilation.  Verdict: for.  Used (summarised, not quoted).

Lisle 2024/2025 and Barnes 2024, Answers Research Journal 17-18

The intra-creationist exchange on the static-space Doppler model.  Worked through in full in the sister article on the Doppler model.  Verdict: mixed.  Used only for Lisle's concession that his model does not solve the starlight problem.

Layer 2 — big bang nucleosynthesis

Yeh, Olive, Fields et al. 2026, arXiv:2601.22239

The current best comparison:  Ω_b h² = 0.02227 ± 0.00043 from twelve deuterium systems with no CMB input, against 0.02230 ± 0.00021 from the CMB alone.  The single most important number in the article.  Verdict: for.  Used.

Launders, Giovanetti & Liu 2026, arXiv:2604.16600; Poulin, Froustey, Pitrou & Smith 2026, arXiv:2607.20635

The counterweight.  Both report a growing ~2σ deuterium tension, produced entirely by how two d+d cross sections are fitted.  The second proposes new physics during nucleosynthesis.  Verdict: against, mildly.  Used — the article prints it rather than reporting only the favourable number.

Cooke, Pettini & Steidel 2018, ApJ 855:102

The one-percent primordial deuterium measurement:  D/H = (2.527 ± 0.030) × 10⁻⁵ from seven damped Lyman-alpha systems, with a maximum-likelihood intrinsic dispersion of zero.  Superseded for the article's headline number by the twelve-system value, but this is the paper that made deuterium the decisive test.  Verdict: for.  Used indirectly.

Cooke 2024, arXiv:2409.06015

An encyclopedia review by the observer who made the measurement.  Supplies both the article's best general-audience quotation and its most damaging concession — that the 1960s helium result was a "postdict."  Verdict: for, with an honest concession.  Used.

Pitrou, Coc, Uzan & Vangioni 2018, Phys. Rept. 754:1

"The model has no free parameter and its predictions are rigid."  Verdict: for.  Used.

Fields, Olive, Yeh & Young 2020, JCAP 03:010

"Effectively made BBN a zero-parameter theory," the four abundance exponents in η, and the element-by-element verdict.  Verdict: for, with lithium conceded.  Used.

Peebles 1966, ApJ 146:542

The decisive historical datum.  Varying the assumed density by a factor of twenty-six moves helium from 0.28 to 0.26.  Helium cannot have been tuned by adjusting η, because it barely responds.  Peebles also states in the same paper that no reliable primordial helium measurement existed in 1966.  Verdict: for.  Used.

Wagoner, Fowler & Hoyle 1967, ApJ 148:3

The prediction, the falsification condition, the cross-check against Oort's galactic density, and the 1967 baryon density that is within a factor of two of Planck's.  Also the sentence that genuinely helps the creationist case — "Peebles has reconsidered the Friedmann case with a view to obtaining the solar helium value" — which the article quotes rather than hides.  Verdict: for, with the awkward sentence printed.  Used.

Alpher, Bethe & Gamow 1948, Phys. Rev. 73:803

Read via archive.org search-inside on the microfilm item.  It contains no helium abundance, no radiation temperature, and assumes a cold big bang.  The popular claim that it predicted 25 percent helium is a myth, and the article says so.  Verdict: against the popular retelling.  Used.

Searle & Sargent 1972, ApJ 173:25; Peimbert & Torres-Peimbert 1974, ApJ 193:327

The measurement side of the retrofit question.  Searle & Sargent made the first credible primordial helium measurement in 1972 and describe the earlier attempts as having "failed."  Peimbert & Torres-Peimbert in 1974 read their baryon density off Wagoner's 1967 curves — the opposite of a retrofit.  Verdict: for.  Used indirectly (the article states the chronology without quoting them).

Hoyle & Tayler 1964, Nature 203:1108

Y_P = 0.36 ± 0.04, wrong by more than three of its own error bars, with an explicit falsification condition attached.  Verdict: against, on the drift;  for, on the falsifiability.  Used.

Lind, Meléndez, Asplund et al. 2013, A&A 554:A96

Killed the lithium-6 "second lithium problem" by showing the claimed detections were an artifact of neglected line asymmetries.  Verdict: for.  Used.

Molaro et al. 2024

Re-analysis of the Small Magellanic Cloud interstellar lithium that now cuts against the stellar-depletion explanation of the lithium-7 problem.  Verdict: against.  Used — and it is why the article does not present stellar depletion as the settled answer.

Howk et al. 2012, Nature 489:121

The Small Magellanic Cloud lithium measurement, widely cited as supporting stellar depletion.  Considered and deliberately not cited alone, because the 2024 re-analysis flips its direction.  Recorded here so nobody re-uses it uncritically.

Particle Data Group BBN review (Fields, Molaro & Sarkar, rev. August 2025)

Supplies the helium-3 verdict.  Verdict: mixed.  Used.

Mossa et al. 2020, Nature 587:210 (LUNA)

The d(p,γ)³He cross-section measurement that resolved the 2018 deuterium tension.  Verdict: for.  Considered and not cited directly — the article uses the post-LUNA numbers rather than retelling the episode.

Anders et al. 2014, PRL 113:042501 (LUNA)

The ²H(α,γ)⁶Li measurement that removed the lithium-6 anomaly.  Verdict: for.  Used indirectly, via the ICR article that cites it against itself.

Mitchell, Physics Essays 10 (1997); Henry, Journal of Creation 20(2) (2006)

The two sources behind the retrofit charge in circulation.  Both were read.  Mitchell's central assertion — that the baryon-to-photon ratio "has also been arbitrarily adjusted to agree with the currently established helium-to-hydrogen ratio" — is false as physics, because helium scales as η^0.039.  Henry's supporting citations for the D/H claim are a self-citation and a two-page news commentary, and his McKellar figure is footnoted to a secondary source rather than to McKellar.  Verdict: against, and weakly sourced.  Used in substance;  neither is quoted directly, because the article engages the strongest form of the argument rather than the weakest.

Layer 3 — the microwave background

Fixsen et al. 1996, ApJ 473:576; Fixsen 2009, ApJ 707:916

The blackbody limit (50 ppm, |y| < 1.5 × 10⁻⁵, |μ| < 9 × 10⁻⁵) and the current temperature (2.72548 ± 0.00057 K from fifteen independent measurements).  Verdict: for, decisively.  Used.

Mather et al. 1994, ApJ 420:439

The first FIRAS result, read off a rendered page image because the ADS scan has no text layer and OCR destroys the exponents.  Its |y| and |μ| limits are looser than the 1996 ones and must not be mixed with them.  Verdict: for.  Considered;  the 1996 numbers are used instead.

Chluba & Sunyaev 2004, A&A 424:389; Chluba & Sunyaev 2012, MNRAS 419:1294

The two theorems that make the blackbody hard to fake:  a superposition of blackbodies is not a blackbody, and photon-creating processes only operate above z ≈ 2 × 10⁶.  Verdict: for.  Used.

Li 2003, ApJ 584:593

The honest treatment of the "cosmic needles" alternative.  Kills two of three calculational routes and leaves the third unvalidated.  Verdict: mixed — the article reports it as not refuted.  Used.

Lieu & Mittaz 2005, ApJ 628:583

The "absence of lensing" paper.  Two corrections established here:  it claims a dispersion in acoustic-peak angular size, not a null lensing detection, and it states no significance anywhere.  Verdict: against, and dead.  Used.

Lewis & Challinor 2006, Phys. Rept. 429:1

Rebuts both Lieu & Mittaz papers by name in footnotes, six months after publication, with a stated technical reason.  Verdict: for.  Used.

Das et al. 2011, PRL 107:021301; Planck 2018 VIII; Qu et al. 2024, ApJ 962:112

The lensing detections:  4σ, 40σ, 43σ.  Plus acoustic-peak de-smoothing at 15σ.  Verdict: for.  Used.

Madhavacheril et al. 2015; Baxter et al. 2015; Raghunathan et al. 2019

Cluster-by-cluster microwave-background lensing at 3.2σ, 3.1σ and 4.8σ, the last from polarization alone, with masses agreeing with optical weak lensing.  This is the exact measurement Lieu & Mittaz said was absent.  Verdict: for.  Used.

Hilton et al. 2026, arXiv:2507.21459; Planck 2015 XXVII; Bleem et al. 2015

The Sunyaev-Zel'dovich cluster catalogues:  10,040, 1,653 and 677 objects.  Clusters discovered by their shadow in the background.  Verdict: for.  Used.

Erler, Basu, Chluba & Bertoldi 2018, MNRAS 476:3360

Relativistic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich at 2.0-2.2σ.  Verdict: for, weakly.  Used as a caution against overclaiming.

Eddington 1926, The Internal Constitution of the Stars, pp. 371-372

The 3.18 K calculation and — on the same page — the statement that starlight is "about as far from thermodynamical equilibrium as it is possible to imagine," plus Table 48 giving 690 K to 4707 K.  Verdict: the creationist claim is factually right and the inference is wrong.  Used.

McKellar 1940, PASP 52:187; McKellar 1941, PDAO 7:251

The 2.3 K rotational temperature, with his own hedges.  Verdict: the creationist claim is right;  he made no cosmological claim.  Used.

Kragh 1996, Cosmology and Controversy

The historian of record.  Supplies the temperature-prediction ledger, the Pius XII episode, Lemaître's objection and John Paul II's warning.  Read on archive.org via the search-inside route with the leaf-to-folio map anchored twice.  Verdict: mixed — devastating on the temperature history, decisive on the theology.  Used heavily.

Dicke, Peebles, Roll & Wilkinson 1965, ApJ 142:414

The "40 K" is an upper limit in a sentence that begins "we cannot predict the present radiation temperature."  This is the one clean factual error in the creationist list.  Verdict: for.  Used.

Peebles 2014, EPJ H 39:205

Establishes that the αβγ paper assumed a cold big bang, that Hoyle used McKellar's number against Gamow in 1950, and that the 1948 temperature estimate is not significant.  Verdict: mixed, and candid.  Used.

Verschuur 2010-2018; Land & Slosar 2007; Clark et al. 2015, PRL 115:241302

The local-hydrogen claim.  Contested but never formally refuted;  his later papers have almost no citations.  Clark et al. establish that the real part of his finding — hydrogen filaments tracing polarized dust — is genuine and is now used to build foreground templates.  Verdict: dormant, not refuted.  Used, with the distinction stated.

Kovac et al. 2002, Nature 420:772; Planck 2018 peak tables

E-mode detection and the temperature/polarization phase relationship.  Verdict: for.  Used.

Peiris et al. 2003, ApJS 148:213

Super-horizon fluctuations, with the paper's own hedge that ekpyrotic and pre-big-bang scenarios predict them too.  Verdict: for inflation-or-something.  Used, with the hedge.

Layer 4 — structure, and the age cross-checks

Eisenstein et al. 2005, ApJ 633:560; Cole et al. 2005, MNRAS 362:505

The acoustic-oscillation detections at 3.4σ and "about the 1% level."  Cole's caveat about the prior knowledge of the peak location is quoted because it is the honest form of the advance-prediction claim.  Verdict: for.  Used.

DESI DR2 2025, PRD 112:083515

The 0.2 percent sound-horizon computation and the current sub-percent measurements, plus the evolving-dark-energy result and its caveats.  Verdict: for, with a live extension.  Used.

Boughn & Crittenden 2004, Nature 427:45; Giannantonio et al. 2012; Planck 2015 XXI

The integrated Sachs-Wolfe detections, 4-4.5σ, and Planck's own supercluster anomaly.  Verdict: for, weakly.  Used, with the weakness stated.

Atek et al. 2024, Nature 626:975; Muñoz et al. 2024, MNRASL 535:L37

The ionizing-photon budget, and its reversal.  Verdict: the old objection is dead;  a new one runs the other way.  Used.

Valcin et al. 2020/2021, JCAP; Ying et al. 2023, AJ 166:18

Globular cluster ages independent of cosmology:  13.5 ± 0.3 Gyr, and 13.80 ± 0.75 for M92.  Verdict: for.  Used.

Bedin et al. 2019, MNRAS 488:3857; Kilic et al. 2018, MNRAS 482:965; Hansen et al. 2013, Nature 500:51; Salaris et al. 2025

White dwarf cooling ages.  Bedin is the key one — two independent clocks on the same cluster agreeing.  Kilic supplies the hard floor of 10.3 Gyr from a single object.  Verdict: for.  Used.

Cayrel et al. 2001, Nature 409:691; Cowan et al. 2002; Toenjes et al. 2002; Shah et al. 2023, ApJ 948:122

Nucleocosmochronology.  Shah's is the honest current assessment:  ±4-6 Gyr, and thirty percent of r-process stars give negative ages.  Verdict: mixed and much weaker than usually presented.  Used, with the weakness stated.

Bond et al. 2013; VandenBerg et al. 2014; Tang & Joyce 2021; Guillaume et al. 2024; Lundkvist et al. 2025

The six published ages for HD 140283, spanning 12.0 to 14.5 Gyr.  Verdict: a warning about stellar-model systematics rather than evidence either way.  Used.

Krauss & Turner 1995; Chaboyer et al. 1995/1998; Krauss & Chaboyer 2003; Ostriker & Steinhardt 1995

The 1990s age crisis and its resolution, from both sides.  Verdict: mixed — the article gives both readings.  Used.

Bolte & Hogan 1995, Nature 376:399

The 15.8 ± 2.1 Gyr figure that drove the crisis.  Verified only as quoted by Ostriker & Steinhardt;  not obtained directly.  Not cited for that reason.

Jimenez et al. 2019, JCAP 03:043

Derives H₀ = 69-71 from stellar ages with no early-universe physics.  Verdict: for.  Considered and summarised, not quoted — it uses the ΛCDM age-H₀-Ω_m relation, so it is free of CMB calibration but not of the model.

Layers 5 and 6 — dark matter, dark energy, inflation

Clowe et al. 2006, ApJ 648:L109

The Bullet Cluster, 8σ, cosmology-independent.  Verdict: for.  Used.

LZ 2025, PRL 135:011802; LZ 2026, arXiv:2512.08065

The direct-detection limit and the arrival of the neutrino fog.  Verdict: against.  Used.

Frenk & White 2012, Ann. Phys. 524:507

The concession quote from two of cold dark matter's architects.  Verdict: honest.  Used.

Kim, Peter & Hargis 2018, PRL 121:211302; Sales, Wetzel & Fattahi 2022, Nat. Astron. 6:897

The small-scale crisis, mostly closed.  Verdict: for, and a warning that apologetics has not caught up.  Used.

McGaugh, Lelli & Schombert 2016, PRL 117:201101; Ludlow et al. 2017

The radial acceleration relation and its ΛCDM reproduction.  Considered and not used — it belongs in the dark-matter-alternatives article, not here.

Weinberg 1989, Rev. Mod. Phys. 61:1

The 120-orders-of-magnitude statement.  Verdict: against, decisively.  Used.

Guth 1981; BICEP/Keck 2021; Ijjas, Steinhardt & Loeb 2013; Steinhardt 2014; Guth, Kaiser & Nomura 2014; Linde 2014; the 2017 Scientific American exchange

The inflation debate, both sides.  Verdict: mixed, leaning against testability.  Used.

Penrose 2004, The Road to Reality §28.5; Albrecht 2002; Carroll & Chen 2004; Kofman, Linde & Mukhanov 2002

The entropy critique of inflation and its three published rebuttals.  Verdict: live and unresolved.  Used — but only qualitatively.  Penrose's 10¹⁰123^ is deliberately not used as a probability, for the reasons given in the fine-tuning article's McGrew section.

Senovilla & Garfinkle 2015, CQG 32:124008; Borde, Guth & Vilenkin 2003; Guth 2004; Vilenkin 2015

The singularity theorems and what they prove.  Verdict: the theorems say much less than either side claims.  Used.

Ellis & Maartens 2004; Khoury et al. 2001; Steinhardt & Turok 2002; Ashtekar, Pawlowski & Singh 2006; Hartle & Hawking 1983; Penrose 2006

Non-singular Big Bang models.  Verdict: method.  Used as a list, not argued individually.

Bödeker & Buchmüller 2021, Rev. Mod. Phys. 93:035004; Canetti, Drewes & Shaposhnikov 2012; Gavela et al. 1994; Huet & Sather 1994; Csikor, Fodor & Heitger 1998; D'Onofrio & Rummukainen 2016

The baryon asymmetry.  Two quantified failures of the Standard Model.  Verdict: against, and unsolved.  Used.

Sakharov 1967, JETP Lett. 5:24

Not obtained in the original.  The three conditions are quoted as stated in Bödeker & Buchmüller's review, and the article does not put words in Sakharov's mouth.

The critics

López-Corredoira 2017, Found. Phys. 47:711

The most thorough catalogue of problems in print, by a professional astrophysicist, with his own neutrality hedges.  Verdict: mixed;  most items now closed, angular size still live.  Used heavily, hedges included.

Lerner et al. 2004, the open letter; Carroll 2004, the reply

Both quoted at length, including the parts of Carroll's reply that are unattractive.  Verdict: mixed.  Used.

Lerner 2018, MNRAS 477:3185

A real, sole-authored, refereed paper arguing that galaxy sizes contradict expansion.  Twenty-seven citations, no published rebuttal.  Verdict: partly live.  Used, and its unrebutted status stated.

Disney 2000, GRG 32:1125; Disney 2007, American Scientist 95:383; Ćirković 2002, GRG 34:119

Disney's layering is the article's organising metaphor.  His parameter count is wrong and his demarcation argument is one this site must not use, for the reason Ćirković gives.  Verdict: mixed.  Used, with both corrections.

Faulkner 2018, ARJ 11:31-47

The most useful creationist source in the whole dossier.  A young-earth astronomer telling his own movement its anti-expansion arguments are wrong, out of date and self-defeating.  Verdict: for expansion, from inside the young-earth camp.  Used heavily.

Faulkner 2004, Universe by Design ch. 4 (still hosted by AiG)

Contradicts his own 2018 paper and contains a factual error about COBE.  Verdict: against, and superseded by its own author.  Used, as an example of the movement contradicting itself.

Faulkner 2018, "Misquoting Hubble," ARJ 11:221-226

Required reading before repeating any "even Hubble doubted expansion" line.  Verdict: method.  Used.

Faulkner 2018, AiG, "Axis of Evil and the Cold Spot"

Contains at least five factual errors, audited in agents/memory/cmb-large-angle-anomalies.md.  Considered and deliberately not cited.

Hebert 2020 and 2023, ICR; Thomas 2014, ICR

The Institute for Creation Research's position.  Thomas's lithium article contradicts itself in consecutive paragraphs.  Verdict: against, and internally inconsistent.  Used.

Hartnett 2009, Ap&SS 324:13; Hartnett 2018, J. Creation 32(2):3-4

Two self-retractions by a creationist physicist, on redshift quantisation and on the missing Sunyaev-Zel'dovich shadow.  Verdict: for, and creditable.  Used.

Lisle 2019, "A Big Bang" Parts 1-3

The observability argument and the antimatter argument.  Verdict: the antimatter problem is real;  the inference does not follow.  Used.

Wieland 2005, Creation 27(2):23-25; Ross 2000, Reasons to Believe

The two Christian positions that cannot both be right.  Verdict: mixed.  Used.

Considered and deliberately not used

• Penrose's 10¹⁰123^ as a probability. The fine-tuning article declines to treat measures over solution space as objective chances, and this article keeps that choice. Penrose's qualitative point about the Second Law is used; his number is not.
• The Huge-LQG, Giant Arc and Giant Ring of GRBs. All collapsed; mentioned only in the retire list.
• The S8 tension. Fell from 3σ to 0.73σ between 2021 and 2025. An excellent illustration of how a tension dissolves; useless as evidence.
• The CMB "axis of evil" as an argument for geocentrism. A real geocentric signal would be a foreground, and the alignment's frequency-independence rules that out.
• Hugh Ross's exegetical argument from the "stretched out" verses. Reported; not endorsed, for the reason given in the article.
• Redshift quantisation revival attempts (Mal et al. 2024, RAA 24:095014). Selected sample, no look-elsewhere correction.
• The sim_ microfilm OCR route for Alpher & Herman 1948. Used to confirm that the 5 K sentence exists; the article quotes it through Kragh and Peebles, both of whom read the letter, because the Nature paywall blocked direct reading.

Open questions

• Has anyone re-run the Alcock-Paczyński test on DESI DR2 data in the form López-Corredoira and Melia used in 2017? Nothing found.
• Is there a published reply to Lerner 2018? Nothing found as of August 2026.
• The primary text of Pius XII's Un'Ora (AAS 44:31-43) is online at vatican.va in Italian but has not been read line by line against Kragh's rendering of McLaughlin's translation. Anyone printing the Fiat Lux passage should do that first.
• Livio's 2011 Nature piece on the Lemaître translation remains paywalled; the article uses Luminet's peer-reviewed editorial note instead, which quotes Lemaître's own letter.
• Sakharov's original wording of the three conditions has not been read.