What theories are there on the birth of the Universe apart from the Big Bang? How long has the Universe been in existance? When will the Universe die? What theories are there on the death of the Universe?

Here are a couple of sites to get you started:
click this

comparison with creationism

[This message was edited by frankvan on 02-10-03 at 08:16 PM.]

frankvan - the first link didn't work.

Most theories of the origin of the universe are variations on the the most widely accepted theory amongst scientists: the Big-Bang. These other theories include the "no-boundary" universe, which is essentially a finite unbounded universe that still started from the 'Bang'; the "inflationary" universe, which talks about enormous expansion of the universe in its early stages, at speeds far greater than light; and the 'oscilating' universe, which staes that our universe started from a a "Big Crunch" of another universe.
The universe is about 14 billion years old, give or take a couple of billion.
The fate of the universe is uncertain. It will either expand forever, ultimately becoming cold and dark, or it will collapse back on itself into a big crunch. This latter possibility is the most interesting, because the 'big crunch' may not be an end, but rather, the beginning of a new universe as in the 'oscilating universe' theory.
There presently is a somewhat new theory developing that is based on "M" theory (strings), which argues that gravity waves may escape (most likely from black holes) into the higher dimensions of space time to form other universes parallel to ours, forever hidden from our view. There is much more to be discovered.

BULLETIN!
I just saw a quick clip on the nightly news that reports a startling discovery. It said that scientists have determined the age of the Universe to be 13.7 billion years. Stars were born a mere 200 million years after the 'Big Bang", much earlier than previously thought. The Universe is comprised of only 4% of matter as we know it (atoms), (compared to the original thinking of 10%), and the rest is mysterious dark matter (or exotic matter) that we cannot ever see, but only sense through it's gravity; and dark energy, (which I believe is what Hawking calls Vacuum Energy and is responsible for the universes expansion, a sort of 'anti-gravity that provides the momentum for the Universe's expansion while gravity tries to contract it back to the "Big Crunch".).
Now here's the AMAZING part of the discovery:

The Universe will not collapse into a "big crunch", but rather, it will continue to expand...forever.

I didn't catch the whole 15 second blurb, and if anyone knows where this story came from, please let us know. I don't believe we can yet say that this is the final theory of the universe's fate, not without a quantum theory of Gravity, which is even more mysterious.

Great questions, Matiqua!

[This message was edited by gerry on 02-11-03 at 06:33 PM.]

[This message was edited by gerry on 02-11-03 at 06:34 PM.]

Sorry about the bad link. This should give you 349,000 hits on the topic:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=universe+origin%2Bage&btnG=Google+Search

gerry, see here - http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/space/02/11/cosmic.portrait/index.html

Methos...

Thanks for the link! I expect the science magazines will be headlining this next issue.

Here's another link to it:

Click Here.

Thanks for all of the links all! Very Interesting isn't it Gerry?