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Originally Posted by Nereid
The 'scaling', as you call it, is not an 'assumption'.
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I think it has to be an assumption since none of us were there. We can know that the trajectories of galaxies suggest a "concentration" of energy, but we cannot assume this concentration of energy began with all subatomic energy from a point.
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The basis of the big bang theories is really very simple; it's nothing more than the assumption that the physics which has been so exhaustively tested in the lab also applies to the universe as a whole.
Specifically, General Relativity (GR), and the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics.
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Even when we smash things together in a lab under pristine and controlled conditions, we never (to my knowledge) destroy the whole "target". We simply cannot know that all energy was once subatomic in nature even though the theory might work.
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Of course, these assumptions - GR and the SM work in the universe at large - require testing, by observations. So far, things are working out pretty well, considering that the physics has only been tested - via experiments - in an utterly trivial fraction of the total universe (the most accurate part of the most thoroughly tested theory - QED - is accurate to no more than our star in the stars in the local group, or our galaxy in the galaxies in the visible universe; probably a lot less).
So, if you don't like the idea of the big bang, and you want something 'better', you will almost certainly have to throw out GR, quantum theory (or both), or modify either - or each - significantly.
And that, in a nutshell, is why Fe (and all elements heavier than Li) were created 'well after' H, He, and Li were.
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http://edition.cnn.com/2002/TECH/spa...age/index.html
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMP8T4Y3EE_index_0.html
But recent evidence suggests a growing skism between gas model predictions about solar and galactic formation theories and real world observation. In satellite observations of the early universe, iron is not in short supply. In some cases it is more abundant in iron than our own sun, a star which formed some 7+ billion years later. I would say that the notion that all energy was once subatomic in nature cannot now be supported by modern satellite images. It can certainly be said that the belief that all the energy of our universe was once subatomic is a theory that has yet to be proven.