Actually we have a picture of the big bang. Its how it started we don't know about yet.
Recent observations have ruled out the big crunch as the universe seems to be expanding faster then light. .
" hypothetically happened almost 13.8 billion years ago is believed to be unlikely"
This isn't quite right.
Planck reveals an almost perfect Universe
This
The Big Bang is going down - Boing Boing
"According to Big Bang theory, the universe exploded"
Is wrong it did not explode.
"basically nothing"
In physics there is no such things as no-thing.
Part of this is the source and he seems to not know about somethings.
"First postulated in 1931, the Big Bang has been the standard theory of the origin and structure of the universe for 50 years.
In my opinion, (the opinion of a TV comedy writer, stripper and bar bouncer who does physics on the side) the Big Bang is about to collapse catastrophically, and that's a good thing."
What is the Ultimate Fate of the Universe?
WMAP- Fate of the Universe
FATE OF THE UNIVERSE Hubble site
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DOES THE MATTER MATTER?
By the early 1990s, astronomers had calculated how much mass was in the universe, and decided on the Big Chill as the most likely end of the universe. But then dark energy showed up in our observations.
According to the Big Chill, the universe should be expanding more slowly today than it did in the past, because gravity has had time to work on slowing the universe down over all these billions of years. But astronomers found that the universe is moving faster today than it was a billion years ago, meaning something must be working to speed it up.
This result seems crazy because gravity always pulls and slows — it never pushes. Yet some force appears to be pushing the universe apart. Astronomers, concluding that we just don't know what this force is, have attributed it to a mysterious dark energy.
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THE BIG RIP
The Big Rip
The universe expands faster and faster, until galaxies and even atoms are eventually torn apart in the Big Rip scenario.
With dark energy, the fate of the universe might go well beyond the Big Chill. In the strangest and most speculative scenario, as the universe expands ever faster, all of gravity's work will be undone. Clusters of galaxies will disband and separate. Then galaxies themselves will be torn apart. The solar system, stars, planets, and even molecules and atoms could be shredded by the ever-faster expansion. The universe that was born in a violent expansion could end with an even more violent expansion called the Big Rip.
So out of the three scenarios for the fate of the universe — re-collapse to a Big Crunch, expand ever more slowly to a Big Chill, or expand ever faster to a Big Rip — we have managed to narrow the possibilities down somewhat.
Evidence has ruled out the Big Crunch. The Big Chill is probably the least that will happen. Whether or not the universe goes all the way to a Big Rip depends on what dark energy really is, and whether it will stay constant forever or fade away as suddenly as it appears to have arisen. And that we do not yet know.
No matter which scenario is right, the universe still has at least a few tens of billions of years left — which leaves us plenty of time to look for the answers.
HubbleSite - Dark Energy - Fate of the Universe
Universe Today
End of everything
The End of Everything
