This appeared to invalidate the steady state theory of Fred Hoyle, Hermann Bondi and Thomas Gold.
This convinced some cosmologists that the steady state theory was wrong, although residual problems with confusion provided some defense for Hoyle and his colleagues.
The immediate interest in testing the steady-state theory through source-counts was reduced by the discovery of the 3K microwave background radiation in the mid-1960s, which essentially confirmed the Big-Bang model.
Later radio survey data have shown a complex picture[2][3][4] — the 3C and 4C claims appear to hold up, while at fainter levels the source counts flatten substantially below a slope of −1.5.
This is now understood to reflect the effects of both density and luminosity evolution of the principal radio sources over cosmic timescales.