[cgbg]

The Big Bang theory and the early history of the universe are tied together at the hip.

The universe expansion could have many other explanations—up to now scientists have chosen to reject them—now they will be forced to take a second look at other possibilities.

If I had to take a wild guess it would be that the universe it itself in a closed loop—and there was no “beginning”—and the expansion is just the current phase of the loop.

This would obviously be difficult to see unless you look far enough back in time and found out there was no “beginning” when you saw some past point where was a contraction before the expansion.

[Telepathic Intruder]

A cyclical universe has always been a possibility: one that expands and contracts again infinite times. But it must contract to a point where baryonic matter is crushed out of existence and reformed again with the next expansion, or all the hydrogen that powers stars would be used up in a few trillion years. And there would be no cosmic microwave background.

To me, the standard model of cosmology, that it's a one-shot event, seems too simplistic. So does a single cyclical one. Maybe the observable universe is only one small part of a much larger one where some parts are still condensed, and others are expanding like ours. And other parts are doing wildly different things. We can't really know without looking.