The Big Band Theory! Any Thoughts  

Man's attempt to rationalize everything has generated far more questions than can possibly be answered. Cyclic, huh? How's this for irony: The more we know, the more we want to know -- thus continues the cycle.

Time, of course, is relative... well, as are all things ultimately. As we experience "time," that concept didn't and couldn't have existed in a universe without someone to box it in. The Earth's revolution around the Sun is constant. Man sees this, takes a measurement, and a year is born (and all that falls within). The planet, without people, just is. It does what it does with no sense of purposeful timing.

It's hard to comprehend something going on forever. We now know that our solar system is part of a galaxy and the billions of stars we see in the sky are only from the Milky Way. Who would have ever thought that? The further into space technology allows us to look, the larger it all seems. I would assume that it does go on "forever," simply because there would have to be a containing body to hold it if it did indeed stop, i.e. our planet in our galaxy (although it doesn't exactly 'stop').

I'm a firm believer that space is all there is. It doesn't need a rhyme or reason; it's just all there is.

As far as planets with life go -- I would guess that every solar system has a planet with some form of life or another. If I'm remembering right, we have, like, 100 billion stars just in our galaxy. That's theoretically 100 billion solar systems. That's hundreds of billions of planets. We could have hundreds of billions of Earth-like planets in immediate space. And that's not even taking into consideration all the other billions of galaxies with billions of stars and billions of solar systems and billions of planets.

If all we Earthlings had to do was find 1 more planet capable of sustaining life, I think the odds are extremely good!

As I understand it, the most recent measurements suggest that the universe will continue to expand and end in heat death, thus denying the cyclic model.

You raise some problems with the inflationary model yet these are philosophical questions not strictly speaking scientific ones.

The cyclic model is also not without problems;

1. What evidence is there that collapse would lead to regeneration?
2. Why do we not see such regeneration in black holes?
3. At the tipping point of a cyclic universe entropy is reversed; order increases. Does this mean time runs backwards?

all the best urban

I looked at the title and thought this was going to be a musical topic. Then I find you talking about balloons and bicycles. Does time have a beginning. Of course it does, my watch starts over again every day at midnight. That is actually the beginning of each day. 12:01 the first second seems the same as any other second other than I usually miss it because I am in bed.

The big bang doesnt make sense to me.

Basically the beginning was something else that had already begun apparently spawned an explosion which was the source of random collisions that eventually after the just right conditions created a planet in an orbit with perfect liquid core to cause magnetic shields that were necessary for atmospheric conditions that created our Earth and its creatures? I know it was a long time, but those odds and the preconditions and circumstance are just really inconvincing to me.

Um, isn't it The Big Bang Theory?
I believe God made it and it Googles, on and on and on.

i believe that, for me -- time has a beginning and God came before time and God created time... i also believe that time existed first in the big bang theory really "existed"... i may also be possible that the universe will keep on going forever and ever and only God knows if he made the big bang theory or not...... coz God has the infinite knowledge of all and maybe God made the big bang theory and so we dont know his plans......