Yeah! I found someone who knows who Stephen Hawking's is and what his theories are! And to be honest i only know very little about his thoughts and theories! I have watched several shows about his ideas and just recently aquired one of his books: A BRief History Of Time, the updated and expanded tenth anniversary edition! Which I have just started so "here is much I do not know" as a wise man once said! BUT ENOUGH ABOUT THAT I JUST WANTED TO SAY THAT I DO HAVE A "Enightened Idea" if you will about the Big Bang/Crunch theory! So I would have to say that when I finally understood what Infinity really meant and how it can be measured is when I came to this conclusion. With that note I encourage anyone to take Calculus I, II, and III and physics for that matter! OK so lets see, just as there will always be something infinitely larger than you, there will always be something infinitely smaller than you! take the number 2 for instance, you can double that number to make 4 then double that number to make 8,16,32,64,128,256 and so on, Now take 1/2 of 2 and you get 1 take 1/2 of that and you get 0.5, 0.25. 0.125 and so on so no matter what you can always take a 1/2 of what you had and so you will be that much closer or farther away from something, and although it seems we are not getting any closer at all, we infact are just not one we can notice visually. Now we know that the universe is moving and we know that we are moving away from other planets and stars and such but is it away from where we came from or where we started? I beleive that its just like the symbol for infinity or the sbc logo thing, the number eight laying on its side if you will! Everything comes back to itself! Just lke a star is to a black whole but a infinite amount of then all together kinda forming a sphere like shape! And that is all i will go into about that for now, and so if that made any sence at all to anyone or they would like to talk to me about this more or anything else in the science realm for that nature just let me know send me a message or IM me on yahoo my user name is: rotten_little_girl@sbcglobal.net. Thanks I look forward to anyones reply, Im opened minded and know that I can and will have a incorrect idea(s) about many things in life, for the more I learn and feel I understand and know,, the more I realize how much I dont know." =:)
 

Right On, Amanda! This is such a big and complicated subject and who really knows enough about it all to be sure. It's still very much at the theory stages even to the enlightened mind of Hawking etc. I was drawn to your reference to the infinitely small / infinitely large phenomenon (I love that word !). That instantly reminds me of Chaos theory (you know, fractals and all that). I see fractal geometry as the visual manifestation of INFINITY and quantum physics as its affect in the universe. What I'm saying is maybe if you could see the quantum world we might recognise parts of it as what is represented in fractals. There's so much out there to understand - if there was nothing left to learn then there wouldn't be much fun left in life.
 

The current state of knowledge is that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate. Most cosmologists have almost entirely moved on from the idea of a big crunch/deflationary model of the universe. Some cosmologists say Dark Matter or MACHO(matter that doesn't interact with light but who's influences can be quantitatively measured) may represent 90% of the universe. The stars and planets and other visible matter making up the other 10%. The assumption is that this dark matter and the affects of it's gravitational pull may one day bring the universe back to the point of the big bang. I don't know much about physics or cosmology...but I would assume if the universe was expanding at an exponential rate, the velocity of space and time is probably just more powerful than the weak gravitational influence the sum of all matter(visible and dark) may have on it's expansion. I say.... no big crunch.
 

Thanks for contributing Matt, and it's good to have you aboard. I was reading recently (Australian Dr. Paul Davies) that he believed regarding the expanding model that the universe was heading for what I think he called "a heat death" meaning that with galaxy clusters getting more & more apart, in the far distant future all existing stars will burn out and due to the voids of empty space, what was once the fuel to create new stars will be so scattered that no new ones can be generated. He drew some bleak but interesting conclusions from this on how intelligent life forms could still survive in these extremes, slowing down their metabolisms and various methods of conserving energy.
 

what about stars falling into black holes and creating new universes?
 

I've heard some suggestions that the known laws of physics may break down inside a black hole so anything could happen in there. Maybe the exit points (if that were ever possible) of some black holes are actually new (or seperate) big bangs starting off these new baby universes? Another area where I think multiple universes might be involved is regarding quantum physics. There's also the known laws being lost here as you go ever smaller in scale and then there's the weird affect of particles instantly affecting other particles over huge distances of space.