Very interesting especially the fact that scientists have actually done this in the lab. The more we know about how our universe developed the better we can plan and be prepared for the "Star Trek" adventure of space exploration beyond our solar system.

I find it offensive that theoretical scientists think for one minute that they can even try to figure out what occurred 14 Billion years ago! Who is to say that the Big Bang Theory is correct? Steven Hawking doesn't! The universe has always been and will always be, period!! It is the model of material recycling and if we mere humans think that we can figure it all out then we are truly insane!!

You say the universe was always here with absolute certainty like you were in the beginning, that makes you as bad as those scientists who offended you.

When all the facts are in, its still speculation on Very little evidence. Something we will never know unless our technology takes a giant leap forward.

Don't you people have something better to do than sit around griping and complaining about things you know nothing about?

Get a life already. kdc43 you are so right!

The observable time elapsed is 13.7 billion years but that is not to say that that is the age of Space and or the Universe or that that dismisses the Big Bang or the steady state theory....

what you guys are missing is that there is no reason to say the big bang didn't exsist because it's just a theory. But at the same time, no one can verify the age of the universe, it's not like we can core it and count the ice rings. But anyway if they can "make" a star let them do it. We will all have something to laugh about when they blow the lab up.

Ignorance is in the hands of those who give up trying to understand.

"Thought," "not known," "think." After all these years, the Big Bang Theory is still just a theory. In fact, in recent years it has been DIS-proved many times. So why are people still trying to turn a lie into fact? Give it up. You will never be able to proove it as fact.

Stating that an explanation such as the "Big Bang" or biological evolution is "just a theory" fails to show an understanding of the vocabulary. A theory is not a conjecture or a hypothesis; the term means that it is the best explanation of the available facts. That is why theories change as the facts change. Scientists are elated when a theory is disproved and a newer or changed theory replaces it because that is evidence of progress in knowledge and the scope of the explanation. For example, a "grand unified theory" of physics would be able to replace quantum theory and other theories with a more general and factually supported explanation.

The Big Bang theory is a good explanation of the available facts but is now evolving into a more general theory.

I understand the human need to learn but I think our goals are completely wrong. If the amount of money spent on such research was aimed at solving our energy problems I think we would be better off. Why do we skip the basics and invest so much in what may never be solved? There should be a monument for humans of the future to find and it should read " This era failed chasing what they want instead of what they need."

Why don't these newcomers 'scientists' try to understand indigenous tribal knowledge who after all have been here a long time before these pretenders and guessers were counting their toes and fingers.

Tribal knowledge 101: The first day of school -

One of the greatest truths passed to us by indigenous peoples
is the knowledge that our Earth is a great living being. Our
modern world tends to see the Earth as dead, inert matter, while
native peoples perceive a life and consciousness in the Earth and
beyond that most of the world has forgotten.

The Universe is alive. It is a living universe whose life and
awareness ensouls every star and world. Within our Universe, Life
is nested together from largest to smallest, life within life— the
Universe is alive, so our Galaxies are alive, so our Solar Systems
are alive, and so our Earth is also a living entity from whom we
receive our own life. Life cannot be supported by something that
is dead; if our Earth was dead, we would not have life. Every
planet is a unique life supporting living entity. The life and power
of the Almighty Spirit is not distant from us, but is everywhere
within Creation at-once, including beneath our feet in our own
Earth Mother. The Earth is our Creator, the greatest truth lost
to this age. That is the meaning of the earlier statement that no
matter what name we give to God when we start our prayers,
“they are received by our Father, who is the Heart of our Mother
(Earth).” If we desert our World, severing our roots in the Earth,
we abandon Nature’s plan removing ourselves from our life-giving
source and course, breaking our covenants with the Great Spirit
we call God.

Life exists upon the other planets of our system, but we cannot
see it because each world is a unique ecosphere existing within its
own density spectrum. Our sense perceptions are bound within
a limited range of our system’s spectra, so we only perceive the
other worlds where their spectra overlap into our own. There
is much more going on upon the other worlds of our system
than we can be aware of within the limited range of our present
perception. To understand our universe and our place within it,
we have to come to a whole new understanding of life, death,
reality, and visibility. That which lies outside of our spectrum of
sound, light and density, and which we cannot hear, see, or touch
is also created by God - the Great Spirit.

Our Sun System has its own spectrum of density, sound, and
light moving from the outermost orbit inward to the orbit of the
Morning Star. Our journey to the Fifth World progresses with
the evolutionary changes wrought upon us each time our Earth
moves an orbit nearer the Sun following the path of migration
designed in Nature. When our Earth ascends to become the new
Morning Star we will be raised into the highest density of our
system receiving our completed, perfected bodies. Nature ever
carries us “onward and upward” according to the Great Spirit’s
scheme. To reach our present state we have remained upon our
mother world progressing stage-by-stage up each rung of the
evolutionary ladder within our Solar System, now one step from
our perfected forms.

Many cults and religious organizations are announcing the
imminence of a new era and declaring themselves to have a
monopoly on the truth. However much it may diff er from our
ideas of what the Truth should be, this is the Truth: in the very
near future Mercury and Venus are going to enter the Sun and be
altered into energy. Our Moon will move into the orbit vacated
by Mercury, and the Earth will enter the orbit vacated by Venus,
the Morning Star. All other Worlds, from Pluto to Mars, will
move one position closer to the Sun. Earth will become the new
Fifth World (new Heaven), and Mars will become the new Fourth
World (new Earth) following Nature’s “Pattern of Migration”
(see Chapter 3, and Fig. 3-5). We have gained a good deal of
knowledge about our universe so far in this age, but there is more
for us to learn.

And I saw a new Heaven and a new Earth: for the first
Heaven and the first Earth had passed away. (Revelation
21:1)

As described above, a Solar System is self-propagating: it is
produced by the Sun, then consumed by the Sun, and reproduced
by the Sun. This pattern perpetuates infinitely. The Egyptian
symbol of the snake consuming its own tail was intended to
illustrate the self-propagating nature of a Solar System. Integral to
this system is the evolution of species from raw material into their
final form. In our completed forms we are part of a large family
serving the Great Spirit who gladly perform services which are indispensable
to the maintenance of a Solar System, helping the younger worlds
and their life to follow in our footsteps. Referring to this process,
the ceremonies of some native peoples represent each planet as
a bird in the nest of our Solar System who periodically hatch
their eggs. In some of these cosmologies, each planet is designated
with its own color and sacred bird, for example, turquoise and the
Great Horned Owl for the Fourth-World Earth.

When a planet makes a transition from one orbit to another
the new lifeforms are evolved to ones adapted to live in their new
environment closer to the Sun. The Sun acts as an incubator. As
God’s creations draw nearer the Sun more heat and energy are
released to them, and they are evolved to a higher, more intelligent
form. This fits with the theory proposed by some scientists based
upon the fossil record known as Punctuated Equilibrium: life
remains fairly constant over long periods (equilibrium over the
span of a given “World-Age,” the “rest” of our present “seventh
day” of Creation); then, relatively suddenly, life makes major
evolutionary advances (the punctuation at the end of Purification
Time). All planets are surrounded by varying kinds and amounts
of gases; and while our Earth is the only planet with an atmosphere
suitable for life as we know it, the atmosphere of other planets
are suited to life forms which exist on those planets. The next
transition will bring about the final stage in the growth pattern
of man upon our Earth. When humanity moves into the orbit of
the Morning Star with our Earth, we realize our full potential. We
are then raised into the highest density spectrum of our System,
receiving our eternal, incorruptible forms.

Hey Guys.....I think we are forgetting that "time" is a physical property. It changes with mass, speed and gravaty forces. Time is not a constant, it changes depending on it's environment. This has been proven mathamatically and can be demonstrated numerous ways. Trying to place an age on an object is pointless because you are assuming "time" as a constant. To add another spanner in the works....If you look at the results on the tests done on the calculation of the speed of light, you will discover the speed of light is slowing down. This is no longer "theory". This also is a factor with "time"........So....really......the age of an object really depends upon who and where the person is looking from.

I think I'm beginning to hear the theme from "Twilight Zone" in the background. It's getting louder. Wait....the universe....it's expanding all around us! Put away those mushrooms, Skycipher.

Here's something that is not theory or conjecture---ten years of careful astronomical measurements have shown that not only is the universe expanding, but the rate of expansion is going up (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space). The universe most certainly has not always been here, and it will not always be here. The good news is that the universe, in this model, needs necessarily to have started in an extremely low entropy state, and biological evolution seems to be driving us relentlessly towards a lower entropy configuration. It gives a whole new definition to being 'made in His image'. How I see it, the Creator was destroyed in the act of the creation of this universe of ours (an event elsewise known as the Big Bang), and it is our jobs to return to that 'initial state', so as to choose something-ness over nothing-ness. If the angry lovers of Jesus and those that lay prostrate before the altar of Science can't see that they are telling the same story, we may be in for more trouble than we can handle in short order.