The Big Bang

Well we don't know but there are several theories.

One is that the "universe" oscillates. So the big ban was somehow created by a big crunch from the last one.

From the last WHAT?

You cant make something out of nothing.

I know of the theory that the universe will expand (as it is doing) and one day may come to a point where it implodes on itself and start the whole process over.

*least i THINK thats what i read*.

It will expand for so long and then start to come together once again until it reaches a point where it is all but one and another big bang will happen once again

I'm getting dizzy thinking about it.

Drat... and I'd just settled on a title for my doctoral thesis: "The Universe, and Everything Outside it."

I guess my PhD's going to have to wait a little longer... mutter, mutter, mutter...

Phil, you're a man before your time, you're talent is wasted at our current level of technology, just give it a few more hundred years and you could be another Albert Einstein. :lol:

Hey PJ, the Big Bang theory for me is one of those things that science can't explain and (some) religions endorse! You know, the whole "was it always there?" argument, and so on. After a while, my brain hurt, so I have given up since!

If you want to give your brain some exercise pick up a copy of the Elegant Universe by Brian Greene. That the best book I've seen on string theory. Also made into a short series of documentaries, the first is at tinyurl.com/3d3w2e

I've just finished his follow up The Fabric of the Cosmos which is equally brilliant and gives you plenty to think about.

It gets worse.

Exactly 50 year's ago Hugh Everett proposed the "Many Worlds" interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.

At every quantum moment in time the universe splits. Then the new universe also splits etc. etc. forever.
See:

plato.stanford.edu/entries/qm-manyworlds/

This theory is now being revisited as the best interpretation of quantum mechanics.

Peter.

P.S.

The great Biologist and science populariser J.B.S. Haldane once said:

"The Universe is not just queerer than we imagine, it is queerer than we can imagine."

Peter.