Questioning the origins of The Universe?
The questioning starts as soon as humans use its ability to think. Human intuition driven by experience of nature is conflicted. We experience all living things have a life span, a beginning and end. In spite of short life span, the nature and society as a whole remains unchanged and unaffected by this cycle.
Forces of nature impact non-living things as well- like rivers, stones etc. The life span concept can therefore be extended to all things of the universe around us. Astronomical observation makes scientists to apply life span concept to astronomical objects as well. The question is can this be extended to universe as a whole.
The answer depends on what we mean by universe. If we mean stars and galaxies, since these objects are observed to have a life span. The universe is likely to have a life span. This has been beautifully extrapolated into a big bang theory.
If there is possibility of conditions to develop for one big bang, there is no reason to expect only one big bang. Big Bang theory, itself can have many epochs (Big Bangs). If there are many big-bangs, they may not occur in sequence. They may be separated in space as well as time.
Another possibility arises, if we revisit Einstein's mass energy equation. It may be interpreted as mass-energy simultaneity equation. Thus mass and energy are simultaneous manifestation of reality. Let us name this reality as Knergy.
We look at conservation concept as two concepts. Konservation (Conservation without |Neutralization) and Neutralization (Life span - existence between two epochs of birth and death Anti-Konservation).
Konservation is defining characteristic of Knergy while Neutralization of space. Now we can remove the conflict in human intuition by statement 'Space Contains Knergy' as describing the universe.
A universe described in statement 'Space Contains Knergy' is everlasting. It has no epochs. Epochs if any, are part of this universe.