Saying it does not serve as a viable explanation for the origin of the universe, the big bang theory has been questioned by an Indian and an American scientist.

The peer-reviewed Harvard journal, Journal of Cosmology has accepted to publish the research papers of Ashwini Kumar Lal of India's Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation and Rhawn Joseph of Northern California's Brain Research Laboratory in its April issue.

The research papers come even as scientists at Geneva's European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) are in the midst of experiments on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) recreating conditions of the beginning of the universe.

Lal told IANS, "The two scientific papers cast shadows of suspicion over the efficacy of the Big Bang model. The scientific community may have to ponder afresh over the issue relating to the origin of the universe."

CERN scientists "are trying to jigsaw a theory which fits the conditions of the Big Bang model," he further noted.

He also added, "The Big Bang is said to have occurred 13.75 billion years. But there is evidence, as I have written in my paper, that there were fully formed distant galaxies that must have already been billions of years old at the time."

"There is a growing body of evidence which demonstrates the Universe could not have begun with a Big Bang 13.75 billion years ago," Lal says in his paper, "Big Bang? A Critical Review."

Explaining further, he said, "Indeed, the day may come when it is determined there never was a Big Bang and cosmologists of the future will only gaze back in wonder at how anyone could have believed in a creation event which was refuted by so much contradictory evidence." (With Inputs from Agencies)