According to the accepted theory of how the universe began, billions of years ago all matter was concentrated into one, small, highly compacted sphere no bigger than an atom. That means there was nothing else in the entire universe except this one, immensely dense particle. Because of the tremendous gravitational pressure within this particle, it reached a point where it violently exploded, spewing forth all of its matter into the void of space in the form of gas, radiation, and dust. The initial heat generated by this explosion was immense but, as matter traveled away from the center of the blast, it eventually began to cool and, as it did, the dust and gas began to coalesce, coming together to form stars, planets, solar systems and galaxies.

An Associate Press story dated December 11, 1998 reported, "The Apache Point Observatory near Sunspot has found three of the four most distant quasars since it began its Sloan Digital Sky Survey in May. `It's a fair statement to say we're talking many billions of light years away,' said Bruce Gillespie, site operations manager at Apache Point. The quasars are at the edge of the known universe, which means their light is from a time when the universe was a billion years old and about one-sixth its present size. Astronomers believe the universe is 10 billion to 15 billion years old."

A CNN press release dated November 23, 1998, stated, "Peering down a 12 billion-light-year corridor, NASA's Hubbell Space Telescope has captured a glimpse of thousands of previously unseen galaxies at the far side of the universe, astronomers said Monday... The picture shows galaxies more than 12 billion light years away... The picture, which showed thousands of never-before-seen galaxies on the far side of the universe, proved a bonanza for astronomers interested in studying the origin and evolution of the universe... Key to understanding the value of a `deep field' picture is the notion that, as the Hubbell Space Telescope images galaxies billions of light years away, it is not only peering across space, but also back in time. The resulting images show what the galaxies looked like 12 billion years ago, shortly after the Big Bang, astronomers said."

Today, after many more observations and further analysis since those reports were made, astronomers have now more accurately calculated that the Big Bang happened 13.7 billion years ago. Therefore, it is their contention that when they see a picture of a galaxy that is 12 Billion Light Years (BLY) from earth this is what that galaxy looked like 1.7 billion years after the Big Bang.

However, there are three problems with this hypothesis. The first two involves the speed of light versus the speed of matter. Light travels at 186,000 miles per second, or almost 670 million miles per hour. According to Einstein's theory of relativity, nothing moves faster than the speed of light. In fact, according to his theory, anything that even approaches the speed of light, of necessity must become converted to light. Therefore, if an object is solid, it must move at a speed considerably slower than the speed of light.

For the sake of comparison, let's assume that in space all matter is traveling at one-fifth the speed of light or 134 million miles an hour. To help put this in perspective, it takes light approximately eight and a half minutes to travel from the Sun to the Earth (ninety-three million miles). An object traveling at one-fifth the speed of light would take a little less than forty-three minutes to go the same distance. The Mars Polar Lander spacecraft which was launched on January 4, 1999 traveled through space at 57,000 miles per hour. At that rate it will take seventy-one days to travel the same distance that it takes light to travel in eight and a half minutes.

With this understanding, if our star was made from matter that came from the big bang, then it becomes almost impossible to explain how light from the Big Bang could travel for 12 billion years in order to reach the point it took us 13.7 billion years to get to when we were traveling at one-fifth the speed of light, especially since we both came from the same place at the same time. For that to happen, our planet would have to have been going faster than the speed of light and then slowed way down to let light catch up with us.

To illustrate this problem, imagine someone driving a car at 20 mph. At that rate it will take five hours for them to travel 100 miles. But if someone traveled at 100 mph then they will cover the same distance in only an hour. In the same way, if matter travels at one fifth the speed of light it will take five times longer to go the same distance as light. If that is so, then how can light from 12 billion years ago just now be catching up with us when we've been traveling slower than light?

The only way for us to see starlight that has been traveling for 12 billion years before it gets to us is for the universe to be at least 60 billion years old. The reason why is because it would take our planet five time longer to cover the same distance that it takes light (5 X 12 billion = 60 billion). In that case the Big Bang would have to have happened more than 60 billion years ago for our planet to be where it is today in order to see light that took 12 BLY to get to us.

On the other hand, if the Big Bang did happen 13.7 billion years ago, as scientists claim, then the light given off at the beginning of that explosion would only have taken 2.4 billion years (1/5 of 12 billion) to get to where we are today. The problem is that 2.4 billion years after the Big Bang we weren't in our current location in space to see it. It must be kept in mind that this illustration is based on matter traveling at one-fifth the speed of light but the slower matter travels (the speed of light is constant) the older the universe would have to be in order for us to see a star that is 12 BLY away.

To understand the second problem with the big bang theory we must follow the time line of the explosion. According to the theory, in the beginning all matter was concentrated into one small, highly compacted particle but, at the instant of the explosion, all the matter contained in that one incredibly small sphere shot out into space in all directions at a tremendous rate of speed, leaving the center where the explosions took place completely empty because everything would be moving away from the point of explosion.

One million years later, the material from the explosion was still moving further away from the center point of the explosion but, as the gases began to cool, some of the elements began to gather together, starting the process of forming stars. Because of this interaction, the speed at which some particles were moving away from the explosion point would naturally slow down, while other particles of matter would continue traveling away from the explosion point at the same rate as before. This would then create a continually widening band of matter which would have two edges - the farthest, outer edge, beyond which there is nothing except totally empty space, and the inner edge, which is the closest edge to where the big bang first took place. Behind this inner edge there would also be a void because everything is moving farther and farther away from the point of explosion.

Three billion years after the Big Bang the cosmic balloon has grown larger, and so has the width of the band of matter, as well as the size of the void inside the universe. At this time many stars have formed and are gathering together in the first signs of a galaxy. Both logic and physics tells us that we should expect to find many stars at the outer edge of the universe, beyond which there is nothing, and we would also expect to find other stars close to the inner most edge of the band of matter, beyond which there is nothing but an inner void.

Thirteen billion years after the Big Bang, all the galaxies are still moving further away from the center of the explosion and, as it does, the band of matter within the universe has continued to widen as has the empty space inside the center of the universe. Somewhere within this band of matter is our Milky Way galaxy, along with our planet earth.

In the 13.7 billionth year after the Big Bang, we train the Hubbell telescope "at the edge of the known universe" as the Associated Press story says, but when astronomers say they are looking back in time, by inference, they mean they're looking toward the center of the universe where the Big Bang occurred, which, of course, doesn't have an edge.

The term "the edge of the universe" insinuates that they're talking about the outer edge of the expanding universe. But which outer edge are they referring to? Is it the one that's traveling in the same direction we are or is it the opposite outer edge on the other side of the universe's circumference that is moving away from us? That's important to know because it makes considerable difference in how long it takes light to travel from there to us. But let's say that we train our telescope "at the far side of the universe," meaning that we look at a galaxy that is on the opposite side of the universe.

The Hubbell telescope then takes a picture of a galaxy that scientists say was forming 12 billion years ago. What they mean is that we've just captured a picture of a galaxy's ray of light that's been traveling through space for 12 billion years before it finally arrives at our planet earth. Although that may be true, it can't be correct to say that we are witnessing an event that happened very close to the beginning of the Big Bang because all the light that's been given off by this galaxy 1.7 billion years after the Big Bang has long since passed our current location and vanished into space more than 10 billion years ago.

When we say that the Big Bang happened 13.7 billion years ago what we are saying is that it took 13.7 billion years for the elements that make up our planet to go from where the Big Bang first happened to where we are presently located in the universe. As stated before, this material didn't travel to its present position at the speed of light. If we say that our galaxy is situated on the very extreme outer edge of the universe (which means if we look up into the sky there is a portion where there is nothing out there to see because we'd be looking at the empty void of space that lays beyond the universe) that means the extreme opposite edge of the universe also took 13.7 billion years to travel in the opposite direction from where the Big Bang happened.

If we say that all matter is traveling away from the center of the universe at one-fifth the speed of light and we took a picture of a galaxy that was on the very opposite outer edge of the universe, it would take light (traveling five times faster than matter) only 5.4 billion years to cross the entire universe at it longest point. If that is true, then where is this galaxy that is 12 BLY away that scientists say they've recently discovered?

But there's a third and more fundamental problem with the Big Bang theory. As we saw with our explosion time line, there has to be a large area in the center of the universe that is devoid of matter. If this void doesn't exist then that means matter shot out of the Big Bang with a tremendous explosive force but some of it suddenly stopped its forward movement and remained in the center. However, such a hypothesis defies the laws of known physics. Therefore, such a void has to exist. Yet, with all the peering into space that we've done, no one has ever mentioned seeing a large area within the universe that is without matter. More than that, even with the aid of our most powerful telescopes that can see galaxies 12 BLY away, no one has ever been able to discover where the outer edge of our universe is. Instead, no matter in which direction we look we keep discovering galaxies beyond galaxies. As such, we have never been able to find "the edge of the universe."

Furthermore, if there was an initial Big Bang, from which all matter in the universe is believed to have originated, then there has to be a center point to the universe. The very reason why we believe there was a Big Bang is because in 1929 a physicist and mathematician by the name of Edwin Hubble discovered that everything in the universe was moving further away from everything else in the universe. In other words, the universe was uniformly expanding at the rate of 100 million miles an hour (nearly one-seventh the speed of light). What that means is that the universe is larger today than it was yesterday. In the early 1930's, a Belgium priest and mathematician named George Lemaitre reasoned that if the distance between galaxies were increasing then they must have been closer together in the past. Based on this assumption, he took Hubble's calculations and ran them backwards and, by so doing, was able to calculate that somewhere between 10-15 billion years ago the entire universe was as small as an atom. As stated earlier, today, scientists have been able to refine Lemaitre's calculations and determined that the Big Bang occurred 13.7 billion years ago.

If they can make that kind of a calculation then it should be relatively easy to determine the location of where the Big Bang happened and, once we have found that spot, then we will know where the center of the universe is located. But so far, no one has ever declared having found it.

The reason why that would be important to know is because we then have the means for discovering our location within the universe. If we know where the center of the universe is then we can train our telescopes towards that spot and look for the inner edge of the band of matter to determine how close or far we are from it. After that, we can then train our telescopes in the opposite direction to discover where the outer edge of the band of matter is located.

The way we can tell how close we are to the outer edge of the universe is that when we look in the direction our galaxy is traveling we shouldn't expect to see any galaxies that are great distances from us since there wouldn't be any beyond the outer edge of the universe. In the same way, as we look towards the center of the universe we should expect to find a large gap in light year distances between galaxies within our band of matter compared to those located on the other side of the void. On the other hand, if we train our telescopes in other areas we'd be looking inside the universe where we would expect to find galaxies that are extremely far away from us.

However, as we peer into space in all directions, what we are finding is light coming from all quarters of the sky that is many billions of light years away. And the more powerful we make our telescopes the more galaxies we're discovering that are even farther away than had been previously known. If this is true then it appears that we are located at least 12 BLY from both the outer and inner edges of the band of matter. But for that to be true then the band of matter itself has to be tens of billions of light years wide at its narrowest point. In that case, the universe would have to be extremely older than 60 billion years.

What all of this means is that when we apply some simple laws of physics, mathematics, and logic, we find that there are some serious holes in the theory of the Big Bang.

The earth is traveling in several different directions all at the same time. "In common with the entire Solar System, the earth is moving through space at the rate of approximately 20.1KM/sec or 72,360km/hr (approximately 12.5mi/sec or 45,000 mph) toward the constellation of Hercules. The Milky Way galaxy as a whole, however, is moving towards the constellation Leo at about 600km/sec (about 375mi/sec or 1.35 million mph)... The approximate length of the earth's orbit is 938.9000,000 km (583,400,000 mi) and the earth travels along it at a velocity of about 106,000km/hr (about 66,000 mph)." (Source: Encarta 96: Earth)

On August 26, 1999 CNN reported this story: "A gigantic stellar explosion with a possible neutron star or black hole at its center is one of the first crisp data offerings of NASA's newest space telescope, the $1.5 billion Chandra X-ray Observatory, scientists said Thursday... Harvey Tananbaum, director of Chandra control center, said he was astounded by the image of the explosion, which shows the 320-year-old supernova remnant Cassiopeia A... Astronomers believe the remnant was produced by the explosion of a massive star weighing 10 to 30 times the mass of our sun. Material blasted into space from the explosion crashed into surrounding material at 10 million mph."

The comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, at its fastest, was moving through space at 135,000 mph, which is 5000 times slower than the speed of light. If our galaxy is moving through the universe at 1.35 million mph, that's only one-tenth of one-fifth the speed of light. Put another way, our galaxy is moving through space almost 500 times slower than the speed of light. At 10 million mph, matter from the gigantic explosion of supernova Cassiopeia A is traveling 67 times slower than the speed of light. If this was the speed at which matter left the Big Bang, that means light coming from our Milky Way galaxy will travel back through the universe 67 times faster than it took our galaxy to get to its present location.

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