Can you believe that physicists are on the verge of completely abandoning the Big Bang theory? It seems recent observations disprove the red shift theory of galactic expansion. The Universe didn't have to be all crunched up into one singular point which exploded outwards and is still expanding.

Now it looks more like our Universe is a bubble being blown into the Void through a hyperspace conduit. We are like the glass bulb on the end of a glassblowers pipe. The time/space continuim is like the outer shell of a hyperspace bubble, and the galaxies inside are like little bits of frothy spittle being forced through the pipe and into the hyperspace framework of the bubble.

So - we could be at just the tip of the iceberg. There might be a boundless, infinite Universe or a whole string or series of Universes all being squeezed through a whole host of these hyperspace conduits like jelly being pressed through a seive.

Something about the hyperspacic squeezing - like when you take a barely inflated ballon and squeeze it into a tight bubble - distorts whatever the Void or the Ether is just enough to generate the phenomenon we know as the time space continuim - the matter then gets sprayed inside, albeit we're talking about possibly a 10 dimensional influx of matter and energy here so it's not QUITE that easily explained and reduced to an analogy.

And time isn't a constant either. We've discovered it's moving faster in some places and slower in others. We are just experiencing a very tiny piece of 'overall time', so it SEEMS constant to us - but in fact, time is racing forwards and then slowing nearly to a standstill and then breaking free and racing forward all around us at many various points in our Universe. Time is relative. I mean REALLY relative.

Thus, or children may grow up in a world where the Big Bang Theory seems quaint, simplistic, and certainly obsolete - but isn't that just mind boggling? We were raised with that theory as kids and as adults we've just assumed THAT's the way things are - they must be - of course.... but now that concept may be entirely wrong... I wonder what else will be proven entirely wrong in our lifetimes? What givens that we take for granted today - will be overturned - and seem absolutely silly tomorrow?

- Anai

I'd rather face change than live under misconception. :)

Well thanks to the intro of Quantum Physics/Mechanics, things aren't the way we've always believed. I just got back from the library and finally after a two and half month hunt for the November issue of Scientific American, I speared the elusive article. Headline of the article "Black Hole Computers" -quote, Understanding how information could LEAVE A BLACK HOLE is one of the liveliest questions in physics right now. end quoted- Physicists believe that if they can recreate black holes in particle accelerators, that they may be able to observe the computation of mass going in, to the information coming out. Some physicists believe that it will be possible to recreate black holes in particle accelerators within a decade. Come to think of it, I think of 'ol Hawkings brain as a black hole, if explored one may never come out of it, or if one did they would be forever changed.

We forget that science is the exploration of what is. Exploration being the key word... we never completely have all of the answers. And that is why it is so beautiful and interesting. I love when we push the bounderies of our understanding, displacing old theories, crowning new ones until the next new insight pushes our minds farther yet.

Very well put Dungeon Bunny!

I really like: "we forget that science is the exploration of WHAT IS" - ironically WHAT IS sometimes can change drastically from year to year and decade to decade and century to century.

WHAT IS - our present view of the world, humanity, and everything that is - would certainly have stretched the imagination of people even 50 years ago, let alone 500 years ago.

Imagine going through life thinking the earth was a flat plane about 1000 miles wide and positioned at the center of a cosmic sphere of lights dangling from ethereal cords suspended somewhere high above.

And you might "know" that the sun and moon were identically sized orbs about 1000 feet across that circled around the plane of the earth, and all of this would be the model of truth and "just how it is" in your experience of reality - and this would serve as the paradigm for what all of the rest of reality is like by proxy as well.

Thus you would be severely limited in your ability to understand other phenemenon by using analogies and metaphors because your mind would be limited to only processes you comprehended fit within the framework of the smaller reality you "thought" you existed in. It's like being a goldfish in a fishbowl. What does that goldfish know about quantum mechanics? What could that goldfish EVER know besides the paradigm it knows as REALITY - unless it were start ask questions (ok, we have a smart goldfish here) about the very nature of reality and the possibility that things are not what they seem? That fish would have to QUESTION EVERYTHING in order to transcend the reality he was experiencing and possibly find a way to get a larger perspective of his situation.

And that's exactly what we - mankind - have to keep doing in order to get out of our fishbowl and begin to experience things on a much larger scale within the spectrum of reality.

Just as the allegory of The Cave shows us how to recognize our perceptions for what they are and to look beyond them. Too often people trust only their senses and instincts and refuse to delve deeper into the mysteries that the universe has to offer.

I, for one, find it sad that most people will pass on from this life, having learned almost nothing. Everything the person placed in such high esteem while alive instantaneously becomes meaningless and the earth is almost completely unchanged by their life.

Whether or not someone believes in reincarnation or a blessed afterlife, there still has to be some reason for this material existance and I doubt it resides within the realm of "be a good little girl/boy, do what the established religious leaders tell you, and acquire as many friends and things as you can."

Another good book about perceptions is God's Debris by Scott Adams (Dilbert creator) and it goes into some fascinating journies about humanity, ethics, the nature of God, and more. He also has a book out called The Religion War where Christianity and Islam of the future are about to go to war.