mikebart101 said:

"How did the universe begin? Did it have a beginning at all? These questions may have been the subject of speculation and debate for millennia, but they have not been widely discussed for the past forty years. Ever since the discovery of the cosmic background radiation in 1965, the overwhelmingly predominant view has been that our universe began about 14 billion years ago in a cosmic fireball known as the "big bang" and that it has been expanding, cooling, and evolving ever since. Recently, though, a small but growing number of theorists have begun to challenge this conventional belief and to pursue a radical new history of the universe. According to this new idea, there was a big bang, but this was not the beginning of space and time. In fact, in the version proposed by Neil Turok and myself, the big bang has occurred myriad times in our universe's past, repeating at regular intervals during which galaxies, stars, planets, and life form anew. The result is a "cyclic universe" in which cycles extend far into the past and into the future—and perhaps forever."

What are you thoughts on this?

Rest of article can be found here... http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2007/07/a_cyclic_universe.php.

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I think we will be forever asking these questions and coming up with ever changing answers.

It's interesting to think about though but it doesn't change much as far as our personal life goes.

It could make some one a case for thinking that reincarnation might be valid.

These are my thoughts.

Maitereya said:

infinity has to include the finite, so infinity has to include a begining and end otherwise it would be infinity -(minus) begining and end.

unless we are talking of different infinities

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Finitude is apparent, relative, with beginning and end. It is like selecting one or more finite points on a theoretical line which theoretically (not in real space which is 'bounded' and presumably curved at its receding boundary) stretches infinitely is one dimension. Yet each distinct point is dimensionless, zero dimension, and as such is absolute, undefined and infinite. Akin to Zeno's paradox in which it is impossible to traverse a distance between two points, A and B, because first one would have to travel 1/2 of the way and before that 1/4 and before that 1/8, ad infinitum. Yet, distances are traversed
(unless...unless, like in a dream, distances seem to be traversed, and the universe is God's dream, we the deluded finite phantasms without Real existence except relative to one another)! Neo as a human "coppertop" wasn't going anywhere in his machine womb, and awaking to the 'real' world suggests that it too is a world from which one can awaken. That is the premise of Enlightenment.

Maybe different illustrations of infinity .