Did the Big Bang happen?

[Brian37]

I’m gonna try to reply to everyone who asked me stuff while I was out lol. I’m tired so I apologize if I miss anything.

1. On the whole whether finite or infinite, the universe does not “require God” to explain the science: I agree. I see God less and less as the ‘thing’ that fills in the gaps these days and take a much more purely fideistic approach to faith. So my asking these questions is, legitimately, not faith-driven. I am curious about the science.

2. Do I think the universe is finite or infinite? Um… I have no idea. I like the idea of the universe possibly being curved and therefore being a four-dimensional sphere. But even with such a model where if you keep going in one direction theoretically you could end up back in the same place, that doesn’t mean the universe is finite from a time perspective.

3. I like the theory of quantum eliminating the singularity causing an infinite state of time before the Big Bang. It is much simpler to my mind than trying to figure out what “happened” “before time”.

4. When I said always I was speculating a universe that has existed forever. Infinite time.

The term "Big Bang" originated with Professor Fred Hoyle, a critic of what cosmologists often refer to today as The "Standard Model" or Lambda-CDM model or FLRW, with some variation on the last one (such as FRW).  In any case, the term "Big Bang" stuck in popular culture, and so, it persists also within the Academy.

In my opinion, the Cosmos is infinite, in both time and space, without a beginning and without an end.  The late Professor Carl Sagan, in the opening scene of his Cosmos program, gives a neat and dramatic expression of this position, available on YouTube.

I don't see the Cosmos as infinite in the context you buy. I do see it as a fluctuating cycle between off and on. The on stage is what we are riding in, but the universe will suffer a heat death and go back to off. We may be the result of the decay of a prior universe, but again, QP/QM in either case, something out of nothing, or something prior, is not postulating a super cognition as cause. But ultimately science has yet to figure that out.