Number 30 (Story #3), April 18 1991 by Phillip F. Schewe and Ben Stein THEORIES THAT RIVAL THE BIG BANG have not gone away, despite the Big Bang's success in accounting for such cosmological features as the expansion of the universe, the cosmic microwave background, and nucleosynthesis. Dissenters from the majority of astronomers who favor the Big Bang framework include Geoffrey Burbidge of UC San Diego (619-534-6626), one of those who expounds a sort of steady-state universe, and Hannes O. G. Alfven of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, who holds that the overall structure of the universe is dominated not by gravity but by the electromagnetic force in the form of plasma interactions. (Science News, 13 April.)