I never was that great with physics, but as I understand things, the law of conservation only discusses items at equilibirium, which certainly does not describe a big explosion. Am I correct?
There seems to be a prevaling thought among some that since the universe was crated out of "nothing", this violates the Law of Conservation of Energy.
However, it appears that the "positive" energy mass, light etc. are offset by a "negative" energy we know as gravity.
Here are three links that may help. The last one is a lecture and may be a bit much for a quick perusal.
http://www.astrosociety.org/pubs/mercury/31_02/nothing.html
http://superstringtheory.com/cosmo/cosmo21.html
http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/301/energy.pdf
RadioAstronomer, you can correct me if I am wrong, but to invoke a conservation law you must know the value of the conserved quantity before and after a change takes place. What was the angular momentum of the universe before the big bang? That question makes no sense because there was no universe before the big bang. Really since the big bang is the beginning of space-time, the phrase "before the big bang" doesn't even make sense. It seems to me that conservation laws are inapplicable to big bang cosmology. Even assuming that there is such a thing as "before the big bang" and that whatever there was has measurable properties, what was the angular momentum of the "pre-big bang universe"? If it were zero, then object spinning in different directions would not only be consistent with the conservation of angular momentum, but would be required by that law. I am only a mere chemist, so please feel free to tell me I'm full of crap with any of this. I struggle with some of the more esoteric aspects of bb cosmology.