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Primordial nucleosynthesis is reexamined in the context of a detailed comparison of theory and observation. A new argument is presented to show how the observed abundances of D and 3He can be used to derive a lower bound to the nucleon density. The authors define a conservative range for the nucleon-to-photon ratio: η = (3 - 10)×10-10. New observations of 7Li are consistent with the abundances of D and 3He and help to define a reasonable range: η = (4 - 7)×10-10. In either of these ranges the predicted and observed abundances of D, 3He, and 7Li are all in concordance. The upper bounds correspond to ΩN ≤ 0.14 - 0.19, and it is concluded that nucleons fail to close the universe by at least a factor of 5 - 7. The authors review the recent observational data on 4He and conclude that there is complete consistency between the predicted abundance of 4He and those of the other light elements.
Yang et al. (Fri,) studied this question.