I'm not a scientist I'm afraid, more like a philosopher. So I hope a don't make a fool of myself here. I'm pretty well aware of the fact that I try to think about stuff that is outside my expertise. But bear with me for a moment.
In my perception, energy - on the particle level - is just information. Every particle has some momentum and direction and some other properties like spin and frequency. That's the scale that we can observe objectively. We (well, not me, but some people do) can make measurements to proof energy (information) is preserved. When particles interact, information is transferred, what goes in, comes out.
But on the scale of the whole universe there are just too many questions unanswered, questions that may stay unanswered. Like, is the universe part of some bigger reality and can energy flow between thes 'levels'. Compare the universe to the inside of a black hole, energy perhaps comes in all the time from the outside. In that case, we're part of a bigger system. Impossible to tell.
How does vacuum energy work? What is dark energy? I know that there is a crisis in cosmology and the whole 'big bang' idea is questioned by some scientists.
Could it be that the universe has no beginning (no big bang) and that it is ever expanding, just because energy emerges in the vacuum and new particles are created all the time, eventually flowing together to make new galaxies while the old ones speed out of reach and out of sight?
It'is strange to assume thast the universe once was a singularity just by observing the universe expand. The idea of rewinding time to a sinlge point does not take into account that energy and particles are continually created everywhere on cosmological scale and could explain how the universe has been expanding... well pretty much forever. In that case, the observable universe is just a small portion of the whole universe, that might stretch out in infinity.
Is the CMB so homogeneous because where you look the same processes (of particles and energy emerging) repeat for billions of years in intergalactic space thus creating the same blueprint everywhere? Is the CMB the 'noise' of perpetual creation?
I'm sure there can be other explanations for the phenomenon known as baryon acoustic oscillations in the CMB data.
It could even be theorized that dark matter is actually the stuff everything is made of in the first place, the stuff that emerges first in empty space and that a portion of it decays (or soemthing like that) to regular matter over time, the stuff you and me are made of?
So many possibilities,. Personally, I find the notion of the Big Bang hard to digest. Suddenly, out of the blue in the middle of nothing, infinite amounts of energy in a singularity that immediately blows up? Well, where did that come from? To hell with causalitiy? Sounds as unlikely to me as the notion of some God speaking 'let there be...' No coincidence the big bang was proposed by the catholic priest Georges Lemaître. How conveniant, Big Bang... God... Potato/potato.
My bets are on a universe where in perpetual creation energy and matter is born and eternal expansion has been the result of it. It's hard to imagine but in that scenario for every observer the universe will look old in every direction and these old galaxies will expand out of reach. Every two points that are near each other in intergalactic space will eventually spead away from each other and disappear over the horizon of the visible universe. No beginning, no end.
Why can't information just emerge in empty space? A fluctuation here, a fluctuation there, most of the time nothing but now and then, hey... what do you know... a pair of particles! And before annihilating they decay to something else (some other form of information).
Perhaps preservation of energy is only valid for regular matter. We can't make any predictions wether or not this also true for dark matter.
But I'm just a fool that knows nothing, actually.
Just another animal with fancy shoes I'm afraid.
'Are we all here standing naked
Taking guesses at the actual date and time'.
