Because the minuscule portion of the Universe we have the power to observe seems to be ballooning at an accelerating pace into deep space, a lot of talented brain power is being directed toward probing what conventional science believes was a 14 billion year old event called Big Bang. Tons of time and computer power are 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.

I don't really question the accuracy of the measurements which give rise to Big Bang theory. It is the interpretation that leaves SO much to be desired. There are other more logical explanations for the phenomenon astronomers observe - explanations that have been dismissed out of hand.

An observed red shift phenomenon is the key to Hubble's law - that suggests more distant galaxies appear to be receding from us faster than galaxies closer to us. But 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 - which naturally shifts the wavelength of light to the red end of the spectrum over vast distances, it would explain why the suspected Doppler shift seems to be intensifying at greater distance instead of constant when there is no evident accelerative force.

Light bends in the presence of gravity. When light from a star passes another celestial body, a gravitational lens effect deflects the beam toward the mass. Light also bends when shone through a prism, spreading the colors apart into a spectrum. You will note that the trajectory of the red wavelength is the least affected by the interference while violet is cast the furthest from the original direction of travel. Every particle of mass in the universe has gravitational attraction. How many gravitational lenses are there between earth and the stars of deep space? And when we observe those stars, why would we NOT expect to see some kind of color shift that increases with distance?

Even if nearby celestial bodies were moving away from each other, it would not 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.

The age of the cosmos based on NASA's Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe is determined by taking the 'size' of the Universe (as measured by locating of the first acoustic peak in the microwave background power spectrum) and applying the speed of light to determine the amount of time the universe could have been expanding.

Obviously, what they have really measured is the limit of our ability to detect background radiation - NOT the "size" of the Universe. What they have REVEALED; however, is the sophomoric narrow-mindedness which plagues contemporary cosmology.

If the Universe began with the Big Bang, then unless it expanded for an infinite amount of time or at an infinite rate of speed, it would necessarily be finite in nature. But if the Universe were finite, then for any given point there exists another point within a finite distance at which travel in any direction will not increase the distance between the two. There is no such point. And if the Universe is not finite, then it did not 'begin' at any point of singularity.