These are my ATM answers to Carole’s questions.

Since answers to questions in the Q&A forum are supposed to be mainstream answers, and because some questions can’t be answered in mainstream science, I offer this “against the mainstream” thread with ATM answers to Carole’s questions:

Space is infinite and has always existed.

Space is just a place that can be empty but isn’t.

Space is not empty because matter and energy have always existed too.

Energy has the characteristic that it equalizes its density in space so all space contains energy.

Matter forms when the amount of energy in space exceeds a certain density.

It turns out that the amount of energy when fully equalized exceeds the energy density needed to form matter and matter forms until the energy density is lowered to the threshold energy density.

Infinity is a hard concept. It takes practice to grasp it. I started by imagining it, and then equating what I imagined to the space occupied by a grain of sand, and then I imagined an infinite beach, and then equating that to a grain of sand on a still greater infinite beach, and then imagining an infinite number of such steps, lol. Eventually your mind gets the idea and all of a sudden you realize that you can grasp the concept.

To confuse the issue, matter forms at one energy density and is negated back to extremely high energy density at another much higher energy density; so matter forms at one energy density and cannot exist above a certain energy density and is negated back energy. Matter only exists within that narrow range of energy density.

Energy from negated matter is very compressed and therefore has great potential expansion energy and so it expands.

During expansion which lowers the energy density the density re-enters the matter formation range and allows matted to form again. This is happening at all times across infinite space in arenas, one of which is like what we recognize as "our expanding universe".

The high energy density that negates matter occurs in a big crunch.

A big crunch forms due to gravity but is not the collapse of an expanding arena. The big crunch forms from the mixing and merging of matter that formed in numerous expanding arenas across space; crunches are rendezvous of matter that are fed by numerous expanding arenas in the surrounding space.

Anti-matter is a temporary condition that arises in high energy collisions of accelerated matter. As the accelerated particles destroy each other there is a cloud of energy released that forms into exotic particles including anti-particles. When anti-particles and normal particles meet after the collision they recombine and create new particles formed from the energy of the collided particles.