Recently in this Theory of Everything internet enclave, the following - exemplary - excerpt was included in a post, by neutralino:
"Note that nowhere in the BB theory does it state 'the universe exploded into existence', or in fact anything to do with explosions!!"
This conceptual posturing is merely an example of the fact that the big bang theory has evolved from it's inception as a 'beginning explosion', into a Standard Theorist bunker of denials that any 'original explosion' commenced what is now popularly referenced as 'The Expanding Universe'.
Proclamations that there is no original explosion associated with the big bang theory have become the
status quo. When someone proclaims or implies otherwise, they are promptly described as a 'novice', and 'corrected', as exemplified by the above quoted statement by neutralino.
This controversy leads to the question of where the big bang theory originated, and, how it was described.
Here is the google acquired answer to that question:
http://www.catholiceducation.org/art...ce/sc0022.html In the winter of 1998, two separate teams of astronomers in Berkeley, California, made a similar, startling discovery. They were both observing supernovae — exploding stars visible over great distances — to see how fast the universe is expanding. In accordance with prevailing scientific wisdom, the astronomers expected to find the rate of expansion to be decreasing, Instead they found it to be increasing — a discovery which has since “shaken astronomy to its core” (Astronomy, October 1999). This discovery would have come as no surprise to Georges Lemaitre (1894-1966), a Belgian mathematician and Catholic priest who developed the theory of the Big Bang. Lemaitre described the beginning of the universe as a burst of fireworks, comparing galaxies to the burning embers spreading out in a growing sphere from the center of the burst. He believed this burst of fireworks was the beginning of time, taking place on “a day without yesterday.” After decades of struggle, other scientists came to accept the Big Bang as fact. But while most scientists — including the mathematician Stephen Hawking — predicted that gravity would eventually slow down the expansion of the universe and make the universe fall back toward its center, Lemaitre believed that the universe would keep expanding. He argued that the Big Bang was a unique event, while other scientists believed that the universe would shrink to the point of another Big Bang, and so on. The observations made in Berkeley supported Lemaitre’s contention that the Big Bang was in fact “a day without yesterday.” When Georges Lemaitre was born in Charleroi, Belgium, most scientists thought that the universe was infinite in age and constant in its general appearance. The work of Isaac Newton and James C. Maxwell suggested an eternal universe. When Albert Einstein first published his theory of relativity in 1916, it seemed to confirm that the universe had gone on forever, stable and unchanging.
The revisionary transition came about, because there is no common center from which the expanding universe, recedes. The dynamic structure of the expanding universe is such, that the recession of light sources is moving directly away from the observer, in direct line of sight, no matter what location the expansion is observed. 'The center is everywhere'. This is not the dynamic signature of an explosion - especially when it is learned that the expansion is proceeding ever faster: accelerating.
On the other hand the described dynamics are the signature of a repelling force acting out of all material bodies, 'just like gravity', except, in the opposite direction. Refer, 'the Cosmological Constant'.