anybody to my point of veiw. Just attempting to put things in a form i can 'visualize' and as this is a 'discussion board'.... well, if anybody needs to know the current 'state' of 'official' knowledge then there are plenty of published works on this planet they can consult to find that out.

I say again- does anybody really know if what we see and call 'the universe' is all that exists and nothing existed 'before' it or exists apart from it?

It seems to me that if they need to ressurect Einstein's 'cosmic constant' in order to make their model of the big bang fit then whatever this 'cosmic constant' is may have existed before the big bang [i think surely it's possible that 'the laws of physics' 'existed' before the 'big one'- and were not just 'created' on the fly during this 'event']. Is it not possible that a virtual-particle 'fabric of space', so to speak, was 'there' before the big bang [and consequently contained the 'location' of the singularity and 'driven' by the 'big bang' matter is just permeating this non-something that was [and maybe always] there? [in which case the 'singularity' could have been some kind of 'focal point' for virtual matter that at some point reached some kind of 'critical virtual-mass' and became unstable or something? Or how about this: what if our 'universe' is the equivalent of some type of 'dark matter' 'star' in a 'virtual cosmos'. The 'big bang' equivalent to the 'star's' commencement into fusion stage and the 'singularity' just marking it's 'center' of this fusion start?].

It may alse be possible explain an apparent speeding up of the expansion of the universe [in an effect similar to some virtual-particle experiments done within a vacuum] where the more the matter expands into this 'virtual space' the less virtual space 'outside' the [universal] matter ['hindering' it's expansion] and the more 'inside' ['aiding' it's expansion] [which is where the questions (in my mind) of where the universe and the center of it is comes up].

Please note: my ramblings are nothing more than the 'thought experiments' of me, personally, trying to have as many 'bases covered' as i possibly can.