It brings up the quandry, ”When did time begin”?  or, has time always been?  If the Universe has a beginning and and ending, then what happened before it began, and what happens after it ends?  If the Universe has always existed, and always will,  well then…  What the hell is it?   (Believe it or not, sometimes I stay up until the wee hours of the morning thinking about this crap)

From The BBC:

Universe ‘child of previous one’

A joint UK-US team has put forward an alternative theory of cosmic evolution.

It proposes that the Universe undergoes cycles of “Big Bangs” and “Big Crunches”, meaning our Universe is merely a “child of the previous one”.

It challenges the conventional view of the cosmos, which observations show to be 12-14 billion years old.

The new ideas, reported in the journal Science, may explain why the expansion of the Universe is accelerating, the researchers say.

(more here)