Better known as Big Bang cosmology, it is not very popular in some quarters:
Developed in the 1960s and ’70s, the standard model has some sizable holes: It can’t explain dark matter — an ethereal substance so far detected only by its gravitational effects — or dark energy, a mysterious oomph that causes the cosmos to expand at an increasing rate. The theory also can’t explain why the universe is made mostly of matter, while antimatter is rare (SN: 9/2/17, p. 15). So physicists are on a quest to revamp particle physics by probing the standard model’s weak points.
Major facilities like the Large Hadron Collider — the gargantuan accelerator located at CERN near Geneva — haven’t yet found where the standard model goes wrong (SN: 10/1/16, p. 12). Instead, particle physics experiments have confirmed standard model predictions again and again. “In some sense we are victims of our own success,” says Juan Rojo, a theoretical physicist at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. “We don’t have hints about what is the next step.” Emily Conover, “Three new physics experiments could revamp the standard model” at Science News
A new experiment, KATRIN, at the Karlsruhe Institute in Germany, will, it is hoped, shed some light.
Actually, it is unclear whether dark matter is what we think or whether dark energy exists. Maybe we are looking for the wrong things in the wrong places.
See also: Researcher: The search for dark matter has become a “quagmire of confirmation bias”
Researchers: Either dark energy or string theory is wrong. Or both are. But dark energy is so glitzy! Isn’t it a line of cosmetics already?
The Big Bang: Put simply,the facts are wrong.
and
What becomes of science when the evidence does not matter?