If the phenomenon of existence were the result of cause and effect and if the Universe was, indeed, created by a 14 billion year old event called the Big Bang, then unless it expanded for an infinite amount of time or at an infinite rate of speed (both of which are deemed impossible) the cosmos must certainly be finite.

The celebrated astronomer Edwin Hubble long ago observed a red shift phenomenon among the most distant visible galaxies and interpreted it to be Doppler related. Moreover, the more distant the galaxies, the faster they appeared to be moving. At the very 'fringes of the Universe', the red shift indicates galaxies are moving away from us at a pace faster than the speed of light. This is a burdensome inconvenience to contemporary cosmologists, and they have tried to explain it away by proposing that the seemingly extra-logical phenomenon is an illusion caused by the self-same cosmological expansion they seek to substantiate. Using the premise of cosmological expansion, they have produced sophisticated equations to pare down those observed velocities to more satisfactory conclusions in order to reconcile their calculations with the accepted principles of modern cosmology. Tons of time and computer power have been spent calculating the state of the Universe at the "beginning of time" and pondering whether or not the Universe will some day collapse back in upon itself.

While I don't question the accuracy of their measurements, I find the interpretation of their data leaves much to be desired. The Universe was not created, and the sound of galloping hooves does NOT mean the unicorns are stampeding. If you drop a white billiard ball into a container of cranberry juice, the deeper the container, the redder the billiard ball appears. If there exists some property of space or the nature of light, itself, that incrementally shifts the wavelengths of elemental absorption markers to the red end of the spectrum over vast distances, it would explain why the red shift seems to be intensifying at greater distance instead of being constant.

Space exists. Although it is not material in nature, it is some 'thing' every bit as much as those elements in the cosmos that have the property of mass. When dissimilar elements come into contact, they tend to compensate for their differences by evolving to a common state or condition. If a warm body encounters a cold body, the warm body cools and the cold body warms until they both reach equilibrium. Matter seems to be dense. Space seems to be sparse (actually almost no perceptible density). Of course mass is just a condition, and according to Einstein, it is a condition that can be exchanged for energy. Based on his famous equation and the nature of 'The Bomb', I would venture a guess that when matter is converted (becomes ethereal), it occupies a lot more volume then when it was in a material condition. There is only about one atom of Hydrogen in a cubic meter of space, but what if space contracts in the presence of that Hydrogen mass, and the mass expands in volume when in contact with space. I would expect the shrinkage of space to be much greater than the expansion of the material. Not only would this be a possible explanation for gravity, but over vast expanses of distance, it might also explain the apparent Doppler shift - as light passes through a contracting, slightly denser medium with no compensating calculations.

Even if celestial bodies are moving away from each other, it would not necessarily imply an expanding universe. Given a finite number of moving objects randomly vectored at random velocities within a finite volume, all collisions which could occur WILL occur within a finite period of time. Many of those collisions may occur outside of the original volume, but they will still take place within a finite distance, and eventually all of the objects will be moving away from each other.

If the Universe (the infinite expanse, not just the known Universe) began with the Big Bang, then it is finite and for any given instance in time from any point 'A' there must exist a finite path to some point 'B' at which motion in any direction will not increase the distance between the two. To claim the cosmic expansion outruns any space ship on four legs is not viable justification. Either the cosmos was defined (finite) at every instance in time or it was not. And if the Universe is not finite, then it did not 'begin' - not at any given point of singularity nor at any distant point in time.