Big Bang Explained... the Big Bang is the Cosmological Theory        of the Origin of the Universe...   the Big Bang is a unifying theme of      astrophysics, as is Darwinian Evolution a unifying theme of biology.         EXPANSION is the basis of Big Bang model - sort of an explosion of      space itself that happened everywhere, much like the surface of a      balloon expanding - happens everywhere at once.

Misconceptions:   1.  was not a "bomb" that went off at center of universe hurling matter outward.             It did not explode from a particular location into a preexisting void.   2.  Big Bang model does not describe the Big Bang itself, only what happened afterward.   3.  Does not expand into space, but sort of around it - it has no center or edge.   4.  Universe was not size of a grapefruit. What is often meant is that the Universe we can observe             (not space itself, but the solids in it - galaxies) was more tightly packed. It was packed             smaller...  but, small is a relative term. The totality of space is infinite; shrink an infinite             space a little and it is still infinite.   5. as space expands, not everything in it does also. Gravity overpowers expansion and results             in an equilibrium of size; thus galaxies remain same size and do not expand.   Analogy:   a.  You live on the surface of an inflating 2D balloon; with inflation the distance between points is            increasing, thus the surface of the balloon is expanding; distance to remote galaxies is            increasing, but the galaxies themselves are not moving away - the space between galaxies            is expanding.   b.  In reverse: any given region of the Universe shrinks and all of the galaxies within it get closer,            until they smash together = Big Bang       BACK                                                                                     The end of the Big Bang?