You have the Bangers on one hand who claim the universe has a beginning and an end, then you have the string theorists who are looking for energy in 6 other dimensions. Both sides have a thousand and one variations to explain conflicting observations.

Big bang theory has been so discredited as to be now just a religion. Folks with conceptual limitations need a beginning and an ending. A circle is simply too complex when you can only focus on the space between two points on a line.

First we had the cosmological constant lose the "constant" part.

Then you had fully formed galaxies where there were not supposed to be any.

After that came evidence of accelerating expansion.

The big bang simply can't accomodate those changes. Accelerating expansion defies all laws of fixed system energy systems. The big bang is now a failed theory and the proponents who cling to it are like the folks peddling perpetual motion or cold fusion. Ned Wright, Smolin and all these others fall into that category and they can't stand that the winds have shifted and their cash cow is now showing all the signs of being milked dry and dying.

Most string theorists are equally clueless as to the workings of the universe, but at least they understand there's a huge portion of the universe missing and that it's not within our spectra.

Now show me a room filled with cosmologists who can follow along with the conceptualization of a relativistic universe composed of infinite energy with an infinite number of finite manifestations, parallel universes and spectra of which galaxies, stars and planets do not comprise even .0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
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00000000000000000000000000001% of the universe and I'll show you a calendar that's dated well past the year 2200.

;-)