The Big Bang Theory for the Semi-Educated Layperson

* This paper is supposed to be largely self-contained. It may be that it is full of tangents and topic breaks, but the topic being explained is a bit abstract, and is based upon studies that have been layered more deeply with complexity the more thoroughly they have been explained. I feel that for the layman to have any chance of understanding this topic they must have certain explanatory breakdowns, that tend to manifest as topic tangencies. Please treat the parenthesized sections as explanatory tangencies, that relate to the overall point. I will try to remain on the topic of the big bang theory as much as I can, but I can assume that this paper will evolve as I write it to sound, at its end, nothing like it did in the beginning. I suppose this is suitable, since the topic in question is the universe itself.*

This is the parable that comes to mind. Imagine that you are floating in empty space. (it’s a common scientific practice to try and eliminate all variables in order to more clearly observe a given occurrence. This is much easier with mental experiments.) So imagine that you are floating in empty space. You can see nothing, not even yourself; there is nothing at all to measure the passing of time with, except the rate of your own thoughts. Suddenly a shiny, translucent bubble appears in the middle of the space that you inhabit, so that as soon as it appears you are contained within it and are at the center of it. The bubble expands outward at a rapid, yet steady speed. It is this way that you discover that you are a point of light, or you inhabit a point of light. The bubble is the only thing in your universe that reflects light, so that it was only after it appeared that you could even tell that you were giving off light at all. Through observing the rate of speed in which the bubble expands outward, you begin to get a sense of time separate than the rate of your own thoughts, now that you have something else to observe. Eventually the bubble becomes big enough and far enough away that the only way you can observe the rate at which it is moving is to observe first how fast the light that emanates from you is moving as compared to the speed of the bubble, and then how long it takes that particular light that emanates from you at a given time to bounce off the reflective bubble and return to you.
This is essentially how scientists estimate the age of the universe. The bubble that we are measuring is matter and energy. As observed by the Doppler Effect…
(if an object in space is moving towards us, the light is relatively reaching us faster, and is therefore “blue shifted,” because the wavelengths of energy have been shortened, and shifted toward the more energetic ultraviolet, or “blue” end of the spectrum; conversely if the object is moving away it is “red shifted” toward the less energetic red end of the spectrum, due to the wavelengths being relatively stretched out from the object retreating)
…of energy being put off by equivalent, comparable objects, we can tell that the universe, (our “bubble”) is expanding outwards at a rapid speed from a central point. Which we have identified as a particular point in space as the “center of the universe.” And guess what? It’s not Earth! If we extrapolate backward, we can only assume that all matter and energy in the universe originated from this single point. Since everything is expanding so rapidly and dramatically, we can also only assume that some sort of explosion occurred there to launch all matter and energy outward. To offer an analogy, lets say you see a baseball flying at rapid speed towards home plate, but don’t see from whence it came. You can observe its direction and rate of speed, though, and trace it with good confidence back to the pitcher. Everything, from the speed at which the stars are expanding, to the very shape and form that matter takes on a universal scale, (galactic clusters, super clusters, and galactic filaments, which are known to span billions of light years and make up the largest structures known in the universe) confirms the theory of the big bang. (humans may have only observed and catalogued only a tiny, tiny fraction of the known universe, but this is still enough for us to start to build a somewhat accurate picture of what it is and how it works. In the same way that we need not observe every known example of gravity’s effect here on Earth to build up an understanding of what it is and how it works.) A simple experiment helps illustrate what I mean when I say the structure of matter in the universe supports the big bang theory: pour water into a transparent glass with as straight and undistorted sides as possible. Wait for the water to completely settle in the glass and become still. Then drop a single drop of food coloring into the water (green is visible yet opaque enough to work well for me). Watch the natural dispersion of the food color as it moves through the water. It tends to form abstract structures; columns and sheets and walls and flowing ebbs and tides, created by the dispersal of kinetic energy from the “explosion” of the color hitting the water in the first place, and the direction of the energy away from the explosion at the top of the glass down towards the bottom of the glass. In this way you can see that the explosion of the big bang releases kinetic energy which has the tendency to create momentary structures during the course of the explosion, which we are still  currently experiencing. The universe is still exploding.
I think all scientists will usually agree, however, that this is not a complete picture of the universe. There are still an almost infinite number of unobserved events to gain insight from, and a number of aspects of observed events that don’t necessarily add up. Edwin Hubble first observed that galaxies were not just moving, but accelerating away from each other at a constant rate, proportional to their distance from each other: the farther away  they were from each other, the faster they accelerated. Because of the inefficiency of equipment and the resulting inaccuracy of measurements, scientists for a period of time thought that the universe was 10 billion years old. This contradicted the fact that the oldest observed stars in the universe were apparently 20 billion years old. (not just observable by humans, but observable, period. This was the oldest received energy output. If there were things older in the universe, they were not behaving in a way that fits our understanding of matter.) For a long time this was a paradox in the scientific community.
Scientists nowadays assume the universe’s approximate age at 12 billion years. They estimate this using much more accurate measurements and more thorough data than we’ve ever had available in the past. As the different techniques for estimating the universe’s age become more and more accurate, their results converge closer and closer together. The 12 billion-year estimate matches more closely the oldest observed stars in the universe, and the old paradoxes are starting to fade away. (This is apparently the natural course of science: phenomena in the universe are observed, and then explained. The first explanation is not likely to match all observed events and is only accepted until an explanation comes along that is more accurate than the first, and/or makes more sense in a larger perspective. The next available explanation of something is usually based on the flaws of the prior explanation, so that the more accurate theory could not exist without the inaccurate hypothesis. Eventually, ideally, the theory will fit all observable data, and fit comfortably within the “mosaic” of theories about different phenomena in the universe. This is what happened with the estimated age of the universe: it was modified based on old paradoxes and new, more accurate measurements.)
All this fills in the mosaic of understanding that is the big bang theory. It shows that the theory of the beginning of the universe is only based off of hard evidence, and is fairly conclusive as such. Not only do we know that it happened, but now we even know approximately when it happened.
It is hard to imagine the magnitude of revelation necessary to shake our certainty in the big bang theory; it would probably have to be something that would shake us to the foundation of our existence, to the point that the big bang theory would really be the least of our concerns. Until this revelation rears its head, however, we need not concern ourselves with it.
The eventual conclusion cant truly be known until all relevant facts have been accounted for. My assertion however, is this: we know that parallels exist between the behavior of different phenomena  in our universe; if this were not the case then things like metaphors, similes, and parables couldn’t exist. If we go back to the experiment with the food coloring, we will see that left untouched, after a relatively long period of time, the food coloring will disburse completely into the water, losing all shape, definition, and energy. Granted, there are many variables at work in this equation, but I believe that this is accurate in regards to our universe. Eventually all the matter and energy will be disbursed evenly throughout the universe; ceasing to form shape, losing all energy, halting any possible expansion or contraction. Without anything to move in relation to something else, and for no living things to possibly exist to observe it so, time will effectively stop. Eventually the universe will reach a state of equilibrium, which is the destiny of all contained systems unless external forces are applied.