Ultimate fate of the universe out a theory that has since come to be called the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe. In 1948, Fred Hoyle set out his opposing Steady State theory in which the universe continually expanded but remained statistically unchanged as new matter is constantly created. These two theories were active contenders until the 1965 discovery, by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson, of the cosmic microwave background radiation, a fact that is a straightforward prediction of the Big Bang theory, and one that the original Steady State theory could not account for. As a result, the Big Bang theory
History of the Big Bang theory correct. No other cosmological theory can yet explain such a wide range of observed parameters, from the ratio of the elemental abundances in the early universe to the structure of the cosmic microwave background, the observed higher abundance of active galactic nuclei in the early universe and the observed masses of clusters of galaxies. In 2013 and 2015, ESA's Planck spacecraft released even more detailed images of the cosmic microwave background, showing consistency with the Lambda-CDM model to still higher precision. Much of the current work in cosmology includes understanding how galaxies form in the context of the Big Bang,