I have loved astronomy since I was a kid and have had the pleasure of learning much about it in University despite my major being Philosophy.
So, I think I can help with some actual evidence. What has so far been proved is the following: we understand how the universe formed from 10 (power= -4) second. Which means we know what happened 10000th of a second after the big bang explosion. This time period is described as the Planck era.
Slartibartfast stated:
"I don’t believe in the big bang. for one, it defies conservation of energy, but you could just argue that the laws of physics were different back then.
But still, if the universe isn’t infinite in time both ways, what was here before the big bang?
the one theory is that the universe has existed infinitely in time, but every thousand trillion years or so, all the matter in the universe contracts to a single point, then explodes, thus causing another “big bang” and the rebeginning of the universe. the theory states that this has been going on forever and will be going on forever. this is the most plausible, in my opinion, theory of the origion of the universe."
But you contradict yourself, you say at the end that this is the most plausible theory, but at the beginning you state you don’t believe in the big bang. Exactly how does the big bang defy conservation of energy? By the way, we can’t know if the universe is infinite, we use to think the stars we saw in the sky were infinite. But now we know that even a planet or a star has an age, or I should say a birth and a death.
There are hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy. The exact number cannot be known since, the amount of work needed to find, classify, and name billions of stars takes a few millenia. Moreover, there are some stars that we can’t even see from earth because they are being blocked, by either other stars or interstellar gas clouds. The center of our galaxy is near the constellation Sagittarius and is about 8 kpc away from our sun.
One thing I would like to mention is that there is something in space, the theoretical vaccum. The reason I say this is because traditionally astro-physicists and astronomy students in general have been taught that there is a void in space, there is simply ‘nothing’. This is not so, and it has been proven. There is what is called the Cosmic Microwave Background for which Penzias and Wilson won the Nobel Prize in 1978. It is this very thing that proved to the world that the big bang really did occur. Reason being that theoreticians made theories as to the temperature of space at the beginning and if the big bang really did happen exactly how the temperature and energy would be distributed around the universe. These theories gave some theoretical temperature which the Cosmic Microwave Bachground confirmed.
Some things I do disagree with, for instance is the cosmological principle. Which states that the universe is perfectly homogeneous (same size everywhere - perfect circle?) and that it is isotropic (universe is and looks the same everywhere). I personally don’t believe either statement, and have not seen proper evidence to believe either one. On the contrary, astronomers are quite honest at letting everyone know the there is no real basis for belief only inferences to their best ability.
What’s your take?