This NASA zoom view, despite the cheesy artwork, is a good segue to one of the most fascinating alternative theories to the big bang.
This emerging new outlook requires some version of a "multi-verse," which can be a succession of "little bangs" or array of parallel universes which replace a single universe, and a single creation event. In short, there is firm evidence out there from recent surveys that the big bang theory is not tenable. Red-shifts have always been explainable in other ways. When you get to near the end of the NASA zoom, there are two notable features - "great walls" and a structure called simply the "cold spot" which is more than a structure (or less depending on semantics) since it absolutely disproves the current cosmological model. It is a hole which is a billion light years across, lies in the constellation Eridanus and consists of nothing - a statistically impossible depletion of matter; and this "lack of" anything is beyond the traditional understanding of big bang cosmology. This hole is also known as "great void" or CMB cold spot. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WMAP_cold_spot The best explanation so far for what could cause such a gaping hole: "It is the unmistakable imprint of another universe beyond the edge of our own," says Laura Mersini-Houghton of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has made other predictions which are being confirmed, for this hypothesis. Heaven forbid that mainstream fizzix is wrong once again, but I think this "tar heel" has got it right. There are also a few "far out" implications for alternative energy, believe it or not - especially in the Southern Hemisphere. Jones From: Terry Blanton >From the Planck Length to the Universe with interactive zoom: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120312.html T
