>They keep playing with their own little observable Universe and creating laws for that instead of taking the common sense position that the observable Universe is not equal to the Universe. So everytime there is a break through in making observations their Universe surprises them.
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>How can it be surprise? Sheesh.
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>Then again, I think Big Bang Cosmology is bunk, so I'm sort of cranky towards the whole idea of determining the size, age, and beginning of the Universe.

It would be nice to imagine a big collapse followed by a new big bang and the prospects of a civilaztion born after the next big bang fooling around with a "periodic" table with some very exotic elements (indeed). I like the recycling - or reiteration of collapses and subsequent rebirth through a re-big bang. The alternative, a universe that expands itself into the "big empty" is a heartbreaking contemplation.

I entertain an issue with the doppler shifting argument that claims we're in an "expansion" phase now. It seems to me, that if were were (are?) a mote in either an expanding or collapsing cloud that the doppler measurement would return the same regadless of direction.

In an explosion, stuff on the outside speeds away more quickly than the stuff on the inside. More time to pick up speed through acceleration.

In an implosion, stuff near the center would accelerate towards the center more quickly than the stuff on the outside, because the "suck" force would be more intense.

In the universe, it would seem, motes towards the center, during a collapse, would be moving towards the center more quickly that those motes on the outside. So, the doppler shift would be red when we looked at the motes further from the center, because our mote would be accelerating away from them at a faster rate.

And, ironically, during an explosive phase, our mote closer to the center would also witness a readshift of motes further from the center than ours because the outer motes had more time to pickup (accelerate) speed away from the center.

So regardless of phase, exploding or imploding, the doppler observations would report similar findings (at least thats what I entertain when drinking a beer in my armchair:).

Steven Wienberg (UT Austin - Physics) has a little paperback called the The First Three Minutes. It makes good reading if you don't get caught up in working through his proofs on Plank's therom:)

But, then again, the proof for "1+1=2" takes about two hundred pages. Even simple things are not as they appear on the surface!