DAVID: This alternate theory to string theory is advancing. Introducing bouncing universes but also math to follow the development of this universe from before inflation onward. This article requires some prior knowledge of cosmologic theory to fully follow but is still interesting:-http://phys.org/news/2012-11-paradigm-shift-infant-universe.html-Quote: "Earlier work with loop quantum cosmology in Ashtekar's group had updated the concept of the Big Bang with the intriguing concept of a Big Bounce, which allows the possibility that our universe emerged not from nothing but from a super-compressed mass of matter that previously may have had a history of its own."-And we cannot possibly know what that history was. Maybe the universe has been endlessly changing its form, endlessly expanding and contracting, endlessly creating and destroying, endlessly forming and re-forming for ever and ever...And maybe during its eternity and infinity of mindless variations it eventually came up with one (out of countless zillions) that led to you and me. Maybe. It sounds to me just as likely and just as unlikely as self-aware energy saying to itself: "Let me keep bouncing for ever and ever...Let me keep forming and re-forming for ever and ever...I know, I'll make myself go bang and create material life."