Spyman

I think you should STOP reading stuff that this "Gary Novak" writes... (You where already told in another thread that he can't be trusted.) The evidence for a Big Bang with an expanding Universe is overwhelming: Big Bang The Big Bang is the cosmological model of the initial conditions and subsequent development of the Universe that is supported by the most comprehensive and accurate explanations from current scientific evidence and observation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang Observational evidence Theoretical cosmologists developing models of the universe have drawn upon a small number of reasonable assumptions in their work. These workings have led to models in which the metric expansion of space is a likely feature of the universe. Chief among the underlying principles that result in models including metric expansion as a feature are: - the Cosmological Principle which demands that the universe looks the same way in all directions (isotropic) and has roughly the same smooth mixture of material (homogeneous). - the Copernican Principle which demands that no place in the universe is preferred (that is, the universe has no "starting point"). Scientists have tested carefully whether these assumptions are valid and borne out by observation. Observational cosmologists have discovered evidence - very strong in some cases - that supports these assumptions, and as a result, metric expansion of space is considered by cosmologists to be an observed feature on the basis that although we cannot see it directly, scientists have tested the properties of the universe and observation provides compelling confirmation. Sources of this confidence and confirmation include: - Hubble demonstrated that all galaxies and distant astronomical objects were moving away from us, as predicted by a universal expansion. Using the redshift of their electromagnetic spectra to determine the distance and speed of remote objects in space, he showed that all objects are moving away from us, and that their speed is proportional to their distance, a feature of metric expansion. Further studies have since shown the expansion to be extremely isotropic and homogeneous, that is, it does not seem to have a special point as a "center", but appears universal and independent of any fixed central point. - In studies of large-scale structure of the cosmos taken from redshift surveys a so-called "End of Greatness" was discovered at the largest scales of the universe. Until these scales were surveyed, the universe appeared "lumpy" with clumps of galaxy clusters and superclusters and filaments which were anything but isotropic and homogeneous. This lumpiness disappears into a smooth distribution of galaxies at the largest scales in much the same way a Jackson Pollock painting looks lumpy close-up, but more regular as a whole. - The isotropic distribution across the sky of distant gamma-ray bursts and supernovae is another confirmation of the Cosmological Principle. - The Copernican Principle was not truly tested on a cosmological scale until measurements of the effects of the cosmic microwave background radiation on the dynamics of distant astrophysical systems were made. A group of astronomers at the European Southern Observatory noticed, by measuring the temperature of a distant intergalactic cloud in thermal equilibrium with the cosmic microwave background, that the radiation from the Big Bang was demonstrably warmer at earlier times. Uniform cooling of the cosmic microwave background over billions of years is explainable only if the universe is experiencing a metric expansion. Taken together, the only theory which coherently explains these phenomena relies on space expanding through a change in metric. Interestingly, it was not until the discovery in the year 2000 of direct observational evidence for the changing temperature of the cosmic microwave background that more bizarre constructions could be ruled out. Until that time, it was based purely on an assumption that the universe did not behave as one with the Milky Way sitting at the middle of a fixed-metric with a universal explosion of galaxies in all directions (as seen in, for example, an early model proposed by Milne). Yet before this evidence, many rejected the Milne viewpoint based on the Mediocrity principle. Additionally, scientists are confident that the theories which rely on the metric expansion of space are correct because they have passed the rigorous standards of the scientific method. In particular, when physics calculations are performed based upon the current theories (including metric expansion), they appear to give results and predictions which, in general, agree extremely closely with both astrophysical and particle physics observations. The spatial and temporal universality of physical laws was until very recently taken as a fundamental philosophical assumption that is now tested to the observational limits of time and space. This evidence is taken very seriously because the level of detail and the sheer quantity of measurements which the theories predict can be shown to precisely and accurately match visible reality. The level of precision is difficult to quantify, but is on the order of the precision seen in the physical constants that govern the physics of the universe. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space About expansion and recessional velocity faster than light: Nonetheless, popular literature often uses the expression "Doppler redshift" instead of "cosmological redshift" to describe the redshift of galaxies dominated by the expansion of spacetime, despite the fact that the redshift is not found using the relativistic Doppler equation. In particular, Doppler redshift is bound by special relativity; thus v > c is impossible while, in contrast, v > c is possible for cosmological redshift because the space which separates the objects (for example, a quasar from the Earth) can expand faster than the speed of light. More mathematically, the viewpoint that "distant galaxies are receding" and the viewpoint that "the space between galaxies is expanding" are related by changing coordinate systems. Expressing this precisely requires working with the mathematics of the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker metric. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redshift The redshift z often is described as a redshift velocity, which is the recessional velocity that would produce the same redshift if it were caused by a linear Doppler effect (which, however, is not the case, as the shift is caused in part by a cosmological expansion of space, and because the velocities involved are too large to use a non-relativistic formula for Doppler shift). This redshift velocity can easily exceed the speed of light. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble%27s_law While special relativity constrains objects in the universe from moving faster than the speed of light with respect to each other, there is no such theoretical constraint when space itself is expanding. It is thus possible for two very distant objects to be moving away from each other at a speed greater than the speed of light (meaning that one cannot be observed from the other). The size of the observable universe could thus be smaller than the entire universe. It is also possible for a distance to exceed the speed of light times the age of the universe, which means that light from one part of space generated near the beginning of the Universe might still be arriving at distant locations (hence the cosmic microwave background radiation). These details are a frequent source of confusion among amateurs and even professional physicists. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space [EDIT] There is also several threads on this subject already in the forums, you can use the search function in the top meny row to find them and read more about it, or other stuff before asking.

First off, light may increase the number of virtual particles, but in comparison to the strong gravity field of a Black Hole, I think it's best to neglect the miniscule effect, at least in this discussion. Also if the light gets caught by the BH it will contribute to it so that it grows instead of shrinks. (Unless you have some hidden agenda I can't yet interpret.) When the virtual particles escapes the BH and becomes real particles, the BH looses the same amount of matter/energy as the particles are worth. The BH radiates away it's own matter, so when it don't have any more matter to radiate away it will no longer excist and the matter that once was caught will now be transfered to energy and long gone as radiated heat. Very small BHs will radiate away very fast and the only way stop that is to feed them so they grow instead, but that is also very messy and "violent". One of the strongest and most fundamental laws of nature is that energy or matter can never be destroyed or created, but transformed into each other. "Conservation of energy The law of conservation of energy is an empirical law of physics. It states that the total amount of energy in a closed system remains constant over time (are said to be conserved over time). A consequence of this law is that energy cannot be created nor destroyed. The only thing that can happen to energy in a closed system is that it can change form, for instance chemical energy can become thermal energy. Albert Einstein's theory of relativity shows that energy and mass are the same thing, and that neither one appears without the other. Thus in closed systems, both mass and energy are conserved separately, just as was understood in pre-relativistic physics. The new feature of relativistic physics is that "matter" particles (such as those constituting atoms) could be converted to non-matter forms of energy, such as light; or kinetic and potential energy (example: heat). However, this conversion does not affect the total mass of systems, since the latter forms of non-matter energy still retain their mass through any such conversion." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energy

An explosion is a rapid increase in volume of matter and release of energy inside space, but that is not what the Theory of Big Bang is about. "The Big Bang is not an explosion of matter moving outward to fill an empty universe." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_bang "The metric expansion of space is the averaged increase of metric (i.e. measured) distance between distant objects in the universe with time. It is an intrinsic expansion—that is, it is defined by the relative separation of parts of the universe and not by motion "outward" into preexisting space. (In other words, the universe is not expanding "into" anything outside of itself)." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space Depending on distance, the amount of space between us and the observed object, is still today increasing with more than a lightyear per year. "For distances D larger than the radius of the Hubble sphere rHS objects recede at a rate faster than the speed of light: [math]r_{HS}=\frac{c}{H_0}[/math] " "Redshift can be measured by determining the wavelength of a known transition, such as hydrogen α-lines for distant quasars, and finding the fractional shift compared to a stationary reference. Thus redshift is a quantity unambiguous for experimental observation." "The redshift z often is described as a redshift velocity, which is the recessional velocity that would produce the same redshift if it were caused by a linear Doppler effect (which, however, is not the case, as the shift is caused in part by a cosmological expansion of space, and because the velocities involved are too large to use a non-relativistic formula for Doppler shift). This redshift velocity can easily exceed the speed of light." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble%27s_law Are you asking how fast energy does expand in the context of Big Bang ? Energy gets brought apart togheter with matter during the expansion and is still being "carried" away from us. Depending of when and distance the receding velocities for objects will be very different. If answering with the CMBR it was emitted from objects moving away from us with ~57 times ligtspeed ~13.7 billion years ago and those objects are today ~45.5 billion lightyears away and receding from us now with the speed of ~3.3 times lightspeed. "In cosmology, cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation (also CMBR, CBR, MBR, and relic radiation) is a form of electromagnetic radiation filling the universe. With a traditional optical telescope, the space between stars and galaxies (the background) is pitch black. But with a radio telescope, there is a faint background glow, almost exactly the same in all directions, that is not associated with any star, galaxy, or other object. This glow is strongest in the microwave region of the radio spectrum, hence the name cosmic microwave background radiation. The CMB's discovery in 1964 by radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson was the culmination of work initiated in the 1940s, and earned them the 1978 Nobel Prize. The CMBR is well explained by the Big Bang model – when the universe was young, before the formation of stars and planets, it was smaller, much hotter, and filled with a uniform glow from its white-hot fog of hydrogen plasma. As the universe expanded, both the plasma and the radiation filling it grew cooler. When the universe cooled enough, stable atoms could form. These atoms could no longer absorb the thermal radiation, and the universe became transparent instead of being an opaque fog. The photons that existed at that time have been propagating ever since, though growing fainter and less energetic, since the exact same photons fill a larger and larger universe. This is the source for the term relic radiation, another name for the CMBR. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmic_microwave_background_radiation

The strong gravity field from the Black Hole is whats causing the particle pair and it doesn't matter if it's a anti or normal particle thats fall back, it's the one who manages to escape that is the counted loss for the mass of the Black Hole. A Black Hole doesn't care whether the things it swallows is anti or normal matter, even energy like photons will contribute to the mass. (One can view it like that instead it's the particle who falls back that has negative energy and the one that escapes has positive, but that is not the same as anti or normal matter which both has positive energy.) The normal though would be that a bigger Black Hole would produce more particle pairs and thus loose more energy from Hawking radiation but it's the other way around. The "tension" in the metric of spacetime actually gets weaker at the Event Horizon for bigger Black Holes and therefor a Black Hole will radiate very little and slow at first and then more and more as it shrinks until it explodes in a final flash of radiation. (Normal sized Black Holes is growing on the tiny diet of cosmic microwave background radiation alone, since they swallow more photons than they radiate due to their size.) "Hawking radiation Hawking radiation (also known as Bekenstein-Hawking radiation) is a thermal radiation with a black body spectrum predicted to be emitted by black holes due to quantum effects. It is named after the physicist Stephen Hawking who provided the theoretical argument for its existence in 1974, and sometimes also after the physicist Jacob Bekenstein who predicted that black holes should have a finite, non-zero temperature and entropy. Hawking's work followed his visit to Moscow in 1973 where Soviet scientists Yakov Zeldovich and Alexander Starobinsky showed him that according to the quantum mechanical uncertainty principle, rotating black holes should create and emit particles. The Hawking radiation process reduces the mass of the black hole and is therefore also known as black hole evaporation. Because Hawking radiation allows black holes to lose mass, black holes that lose more matter than they gain through other means are expected to dissipate, shrink, and ultimately vanish. Smaller micro black holes (MBHs) are predicted to be larger net emitters of radiation than larger black holes, and to shrink and dissipate faster." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation I would think that a stream of photons passing through a patch of space, does affect the fabric of spacetime and thus slightly increase the creation/annihilations of particle pairs. "Virtual particle In physics, a virtual particle is a particle that exists for a limited time and space, introducing uncertainty in their energy and momentum due to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. (Indeed, because energy and momentum in quantum mechanics are time and space derivative operators, then due to Fourier transforms their spans are inversely proportional to time duration and position spans, respectively). Virtual particles exhibit some of the phenomena that real particles do, such as obedience to the conservation laws. If a single particle is detected, then the consequences of its existence are prolonged to such a degree that it cannot be virtual. Virtual particles are viewed as the quanta that describe fields of the basic force interactions, which cannot be described in terms of real particles. Examples of these are static force fields, such as a simple electric or magnetic field, or any field that exists without excitations that result in its carrying information from place to place. Virtual particles should not be confused with antiparticles or virtual antiparticles." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_particle

Hurtling fast enough through space? Well, in my layman's view of General Relativity and Gravitational Potential, it seems that for the Event Horizons of two Black Holes to barely thouch each other during a close approatch and still be able to separate, they would need to have a relative speed equal that of light, if the Event Horizons where to overlap their relative speed would have to be greater than the speed of light.

Catch-22 is a satirical, historical novel by the American author Joseph Heller, first published in 1961. Among other things, Catch-22 is a general critique of bureaucratic operation and reasoning. Resulting from its specific use in the book, the phrase "Catch-22" is common idiomatic usage meaning "a no-win situation" or "a double bind" of any type. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catch-22

When the escape velocity is set equal to the speed of light, the radius of a Newtonian Dark Star is exactly the Schwarzschild radius of a Black Hole with General Relativity. Not much of a wiggle room there, if you get a different value you will need a very good explanation of why. (in my non professional opinion)

The Moon is partially in the shadow of Earth. Text under the Picture "Explanation: Just opposite the setting Sun, the already-eclipsed Moon rose over the Hawaiian Islands on February 20. A view near the 14,000 foot peak of volcanic Mauna Kea on the Big Island, a popular spot for astronomers, offered this remarkable play of shadows and sunlight. With snowy cinder cones in the foreground, the Moon lies within the shadow cast by the mountain -- a shadow extending across a lower cloud deck and on through Earth's dense atmosphere. As the lunar eclipse is drawing to a close, the curved shadow of the limb of planet Earth itself can also be traced across the Moon's surface, some 400,000 kilometers away." http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080301.html Lunar eclipse "A lunar eclipse is an eclipse which occurs whenever the moon passes behind the earth such that the earth blocks the sun’s rays from striking the moon. This can occur only when the Sun, Earth, and Moon are aligned exactly, or very closely so, with the Earth in the middle." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_eclipse

You don't seem to understand the Big Bang theory, the Universe was not thought to be a singularity surrounded with space that suddenly exploded. The BB theory has developed a lot since the "hypothesis of the primeval atom" that, at least in my very old physic book from ground school, claims that universe started out as a very dense clump of matter that exploded. Today General Relativity is used in how spacetime behaves and cosmological models. "FLRW metric General relativity describes spacetime by a metric, which determines the distances that separate nearby points. The points, which can be galaxies, stars, or other objects, themselves are specified using a coordinate chart or "grid" that is laid down over all spacetime. The cosmological principle implies that the metric should be homogeneous and isotropic on large scales, which uniquely singles out the Friedmann–Lemaître–Robertson–Walker metric (FLRW metric). This metric contains a scale factor, which describes how the size of the Universe changes with time. This enables a convenient choice of a coordinate system to be made, called comoving coordinates. In this coordinate system, the grid expands along with the Universe, and objects that are moving only due to the expansion of the Universe remain at fixed points on the grid. While their coordinate distance (comoving distance) remains constant, the physical distance between two such comoving points expands proportionally with the scale factor of the Universe. The Big Bang is not an explosion of matter moving outward to fill an empty universe. Instead, space itself expands with time everywhere and increases the physical distance between two comoving points. Because the FLRW metric assumes a uniform distribution of mass and energy, it applies to our Universe only on large scales—local concentrations of matter such as our galaxy are gravitationally bound and as such do not experience the large-scale expansion of space." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_bang I tried to explain why light couldn't travel INSIDE the Universe before the time of ~377,000 years, since I thought you where confused about the Recombination era, which coincides with the year of 380 000 you spoke about. "Recombination: ca 377,000 years WMAP data shows the microwave background radiation variations throughout the Universe from our perspective, though the actual variations are much smoother than the diagram suggestsHydrogen and helium atoms begin to form and the density of the universe falls. This is thought to have occurred about 377,000 years after the Big Bang. Hydrogen and helium are at the beginning ionized, i. e., no electrons are bounded to the nuclei, which are therefore electrically charged (+1 and +2 respectively). As the universe cools down, the electrons get captured by the ions, making them neutral. This process is relatively fast (actually faster for the helium than for the hydrogen) and is known as recombination. At the end of recombination, most of the atoms in the universe are neutral, therefore the photons can now travel freely: the universe has become transparent. The photons emitted right after the recombination can now travel undisturbed and are those that we see in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. Therefore the CMB is a picture of the universe at the end of this epoch. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Big_Bang As have been stated and explained in this thread several times, the Universe or spacetime has no edge, if we go back in time to very early stages, the Universe was very dense and compact but it was not a singularity and it had no edge nor outside. "As used by cosmologists, the term Big Bang generally refers to the idea that the Universe has expanded from a primordial hot and dense initial condition at some finite time in the past (currently estimated to have been approximately 13.7 billion years ago), and continues to expand to this day." "Without any evidence associated with the earliest instant of the expansion, the Big Bang theory cannot and does not provide any explanation for such an initial condition; rather, it describes and explains the general evolution of the Universe since that instant." "Extrapolation of the expansion of the Universe backwards in time using general relativity yields an infinite density and temperature at a finite time in the past. This singularity signals the breakdown of general relativity. How closely we can extrapolate towards the singularity is debated—certainly not earlier than the Planck epoch." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_bang You are free to assume whatever you want, but that is not what mainstream scientists or what the Big Bang theory assumes.

Well, if the Big Bounce turns out to be correct then we know that at least there was one excisting universe before ours and that it did collapsed before our Big Bang occured. But all knowledge, information and observation we have today indicates that our universe will continue to expand forever and eventually cause a Big Freeze. (Although we still don't fully understand Dark Matter nor Dark Energy so the universe might still cough up a few surprises for us.) Loop Quantum Gravity has models where they calculate the density of the universe as it goes through an collapse, to then "bounce" into a big bang and finally ends up with the universe we have today. If the LQG models with repulsive gravity close to the point of a singularity is correct, then that state should excist inside a black hole too. Some other parts of your post confuses me a little, so I want to clarify a few things: - The Universe is NOT thought to be a spherical thing in a big emptyness in the Big Bang model, the Big Bang was not like an explosion of matter in space, the Big Bang is about expansion of space, which never halted and is still going on. - Light can never escape from the universe, the universe is by definition everything, wherever the light would go, would therefor also be included as a part of the universe. - The universe was not holding back light like a black hole before the time of ~377,000 years, instead it was so dense that the light that was inside it, could not traverse through it. Think of it more lika a room so filled with smoke that you can't shine through it with a flashlight, after the recombination the smoke cleared up and the universe became transparent.

Here is a Link you might find interesting to read then: "Artificial gravity is a simulation of gravity in outer space or free-fall. Artificial gravity is desirable for long-term space travel or habitation, for ease of mobility and to avoid the adverse health effects of weightlessness." "The engineering challenges of creating a rotating spacecraft are comparatively modest to any other proposed approach. Theoretical spacecraft designs using artificial gravity have a great number of variants with intrinsic problems and advantages. To reduce Coriolis forces to livable levels, a rate of spin of 2 rpm or less would be needed. To produce 1g, the radius of rotation would have to be 224 m (735 ft) or greater, which would make for a very large spaceship." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_gravity

--> Albert Einsteins theory of Relativity. "General relativity or the general theory of relativity is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1916. It is the current description of gravitation in modern physics. It unifies special relativity and Newton's law of universal gravitation, and describes gravity as a geometric property of space and time, or spacetime." "General relativity's predictions have been confirmed in all observations and experiments to date." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_relativity The geometry is not carried and does not propagate, it is already everywhere, if you have a Volume it has as minimum the properties of geometry for the space it contains. Changes to the geometry of spacetime is thought to be like ripples that propagates with the speed of light. "In physics, a gravitational wave is a fluctuation in the curvature of spacetime which propagates as a wave, traveling outward from the source. Predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity, the waves transport energy known as gravitational radiation." "Although gravitational radiation has not yet been directly detected, it has been indirectly shown to exist." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_waves

Do You Think You May Have Found a Meteorite? Meteorites have several distinguishing characteristics that make them different from terrestrial (Earth) rocks. You can use this list to guide you through them. Usually, meteorites have all or most of these characteristics. Sometimes, detailed chemical analyses need to be done, but only on rocks that meet all these characteristics. http://epswww.unm.edu/iom/ident/index.html

The geometry of spacetime permeates the Universe and can't be shielded.

You do not know that to be true because nobody does. You are assuming that the laws of physics in our huge and massive universe will hold in this toy universe. We do not know Why inertia arises, Why the equivalence principle holds, and Why inertial forces and torques vanish in a particular kind of frame of reference. These are all axiomatic in physics. Yes, I agree. - But without assuming the same laws of physics, how are we supposed to discuss the comparison in the OP ?

A person within the barrel would still be able to observe if the rod going through the barrow is straight or curved, and he could point out a straight line and realize that he would cross paths with the wall of the barrow if he tried to move straight in that direction. In a Universe with only a rod, barrow and the person inside, how would you get the rod or the barrow turning relative each others ? Right from the start, the forces applied between them determines their relative speeds and while both would rotate, (in this case), the difference in Inertia between the objects is essential to their differences in angular momentum.

If an object is spinning, the parts of the objects are constantly changing the direction and thus the Inertia of the parts tries to resist the change. The parts know they are turning because they want to continue in a straight line, but gets accelerated into a new direction. "Inertia is the resistance of any physical object, to a change in its state of motion. <snip> In even simpler terms, inertia means that an object will always continue moving at its current speed and in its current direction until some force causes its speed or direction to change." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inertia

"Aether and general relativity "Aether and the theory of relativity" was a title used by Einstein in a lecture on general relativity and aether theory. Einstein said that according to general relativity space is endowed with physical properties (the metric field), and one could use the word "ether", if one wished, to refer to this metric field, although he acknowledged that this meaning of the word "differs widely from that of the ether of the mechanical undulatory theory of light". In particular, the metric field of spacetime has no mechanical properties at all, not even a state of motion or rest. Its parts cannot be tracked over time. The general attitude to this amongst physicists today is that although it is purely a matter of semantics, Einstein's comments stretch the word "aether" too far: it is argued that an "aether" with no mechanical properties doesn't correspond to the historical idea of aether, and so it is potentially misleading to apply this name to the spacetime field of general relativity." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aether_theories

The Big Bang is AFAIK not thought to be the beginning of the Universe, and we already have mathematical models, although still in early stages and very speculative, that reaches back in time beyond the ignition of BB event. "The Big Bang is the cosmological model of the initial conditions and subsequent development of the Universe that is supported by the most comprehensive and accurate explanations from current scientific evidence and observation." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_bang "One of the main problems with the Big Bang theory is that at the moment of the Big Bang, there is a singularity of zero volume and infinite energy. This is normally interpreted as the end of the physics as we know it; in this case, of the theory of general relativity. This is why one expects quantum effects to become important and avoid the singularity. However, research in loop quantum cosmology purported to show that a previously existing universe collapsed, not to the point of singularity, but to a point before that where the quantum effects of gravity become so strongly repulsive that the universe rebounds back out, forming a new branch. Throughout this collapse and bounce, the evolution is unitary." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bounce

Currently there seems to be much more matter than antimatter in the universe and even if we later find out where the missing antimatter are, the law of conservation of energy tells us that there would still be a universe, but now with "only" energy inside it instead of both energy and matter. "The baryon asymmetry problem in physics refers to the apparent fact that there is an imbalance in baryonic matter and antibaryonic matter in the universe. Neither the standard model of particle physics, nor the theory of general relativity provide an obvious explanation for why this should be so; and it is a natural assumption that the universe be neutral with all conserved charges. The Big Bang should have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter; as such, there should have been total cancellation of both. In other words, protons should have cancelled with antiprotons, electrons with antielectrons, neutrons with antineutrons, and so on for all elementary particles. This would have resulted in a sea of photons in the universe with no matter. Since this is quite evidently not the case, after the Big Bang, physical laws must have acted differently for matter and antimatter." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baryon_asymmetry "The law of conservation of energy states that the total amount of energy in a closed system remains constant. A consequence of this law is that energy cannot be created nor destroyed. The only thing that can happen with energy in a closed system is that it can change form, for instance kinetic energy can become thermal energy. Albert Einstein's theory of relativity shows that energy can be converted to mass (rest mass) and mass converted to energy. Therefore, neither mass nor pure energy are conserved separately, as it was understood in pre-relativistic physics. Today, conservation of “energy” refers to the conservation of the total mass-energy, which includes energy of the rest mass. Therefore, in an isolated system, mass and "pure energy" can be converted to one another, but the total amount of energy (which includes the energy of the mass of the system) remains constant." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_energy

Yes. "Stellar remnants After a star has burned out its fuel supply, its remnants can take one of three forms, depending on the mass during its lifetime. White dwarfs Neutron stars Black holes" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_evolution Well for starters, if atoms and molecules would grow -> then we would grow, and if everything was growing at the same rate as space is expanding, then how would we be able to notice that space was expanding in the first place ? Secondly, I would think that if atoms and molecules would grow, with a different rate than space expansion, even if it is by a small amount, it would likely wreck havoc with particle physics as we know it. But I would like an expert to step in and make a comment here... I think the expansion effects all objects in all sizes, but like Airbrush says, the other forces are so much stronger on smaller distances that they overpower and negates the effect of expansion. I don't think science can answer with confidence what the initial conditions was at the "ignition" of the Big Bang yet, but it's not likely to be scientifically answered with "nothing". In science there is always a primordial condition to the event, which science use to try and explain the outcome with, if we take away that, all that is left is Magic. Further on, even if Relativity breaks down, when we try to go back in time to before BB, it has time as a fourth dimension, so if space turns out to be finite, we can still have an infinite space-time. The future seems to be endless, at least for me...

The particle/anti-particle pairs could very simplified be viewed as to be virtual particles being "boosted" by the black hole's strong gravitation, close to the event horizon, into becoming real particles. So you could say that the BH pays the energy depts for the particles by loosing the mass equivalent to the pair, so there is no violation of conservation laws here. It doesn't matter if the particle that falls back into the BH is "anti" or not, it will still be a part of the BH. If the particle meets an opposite inside the BH there would be energy radiating equivalent to the mass of the pair from the annihilation and according to Relativity that energy causes the same amount of gravity that the particles would have otherwise.

Maybe you should try to view the expansion of space as a rubber band being streached, there is no more parts of rubber or any new blocks of space added.

But the Moon is not moving away from us due to expansion, it's because of the tidal lock with Earth. "Most of the tidal effects seen on the Earth are caused by the Moon's gravitational pull, with the Sun making a somewhat smaller contribution. Tidal drag slows the Earth's rotation by about 0.002 seconds per day per century. As a result of the conservation of angular momentum, the slowing of Earth's rotation is accompanied by an increase of the mean Earth-Moon distance of about 3.8 m per century, or 3.8 cm per year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon Stars release energy by nuclear reactions, but when they grow old most of them becomes White dwarfs which no longer can sustain it and thus since they no longer loose mass they also keep their gravity and stay bound. "White dwarfs are thought to be the final evolutionary state of all stars whose mass is not too high—over 97% of the stars in our galaxy." "The material in a white dwarf no longer undergoes fusion reactions." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_dwarf "various galaxies" not the Sun, the Moon, planets or other stars within the Milky Way, are mentioned in this law. Fine, then explain why the light from stars in the Milky Way doesn't appear to be redshifted due to expansion. Space is expanding but objects that are gravitationally bound does NOT increase the distances between them due to the expansion. "The metric expansion of space is the averaged increase of metric (i.e. measured) distance between distant objects in the universe with time." At smaller scales matter has clumped together under the influence of gravitational attraction and these clumps do not individually expand, though they continue to recede from one another. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space

That's an awful lot of complicated questions in one single thread, more than I am able to comfortable handle, but I am willing to make a try on this one: We don't know how large the universe is, but we have models based on the observations we are able to make. From our observational view we are in the middle of a sphere with a radius of ~46.5 billion lightyears, which thus could be said to have an diameter of ~93 billion lightyears across, we call this the Observable universe. Since Earth is not thought to be placed in such an important place of the universe, the universe itself is likely much larger than our observable part of it, but we can't know since it is beyond our horizon. If the space where not expanding then the edge of our observable universe would be ~13.7 billion lightyears away, but since space is expanding over time it gets a little more complicated to use a ruler marked with lightyears. With expanding space, light will have to pass through more space to reach us than the actual distance when the light was emitted and the object that emitted the light will be even further away when the light from it reaches us. One example of this is the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation that reaches us today, it was emitted from an distance of ~30 million lightyears in the early universe and the material that emitted it is ~46.5 billion lightyears away now, but the CMBR has travelled ~13.7 billion lightyears through space to us. The observable universe is the theoretical volume from which it is possible in principle for photons from an object to reach us. In reality I don't think we are able to observe anything farther than around 5.9 to 6 billions lightyears distant, if the light has travelled through more space than that, then the object was closer when the light was emitted and even if it is more distant now, that light from the present distance has not reached us yet.