[exodus]

I never believed the Big Bang theory, it just didn't feel right to me.

A black hole is a region of spacetime from which gravity prevents anything, including light, from escaping. The existence of black holes allows the compression of all matter into one huge singularity, which allows the Big Bang theory to be a possible truth.

However, the black hole model has been called into doubt by none other than Stephen Hawking, who now says that matter can escape from ‘black’ holes. If Black Holes aren't truly excape-proof, how is the formation of the exploding massive singularity possible?

[buffaloguy]

The big bang seems reasonable to me. I haven't kept up with the current models but the black holes have not been eliminated just yet.

For every astrophysicist there is a different model.n

[Cboldt]

The universe came about somehow. Either it materialized in some spread out form, or it started small and got bigger. It appears to be getting bigger now, so the "started small and got bigger" theory seems to have a leg up.

Hawkings shift isn't all that dramatic. Hawking radiation is the escape of energy from a black hole, due to quantum effects. His modified stance is that the event horizon isn't a sharply delineated "surface," but somewhere, at a smaller radius, gravity rules. I would think that the same quantum effect can play at that smaller radius too, so energy has a way to work its way "outward" from the pull of gravity.

[Bullish]

I’ve never been able to fathom how time started moving forward. I mean, what was time even one second before a so called ‘big bang’? How could time even exist without a starting point, and what the heck was time before that point? I don’t believe that can ever be answered by any human being.

It boggles the mind.