[KenGee (Kenith Gee)]

The big Bang theory is a theory developed to best fit the know facts, to describe the current, future and past state of the universe as such it also deals with the origin of the universe. Lets not get into religion here, but when it comes to the big bang, asking what happened before the big bang, demonstrates you don't understand it. Nothing was before the big bang, not even time.
String "theory" on the other hand is an idea that tries to resolve shortcomings in the standard model of atomic physics. Particle physics and more importantly quantum physics has been spectacular at sorting out three of the four fundamental forces. However it has not been able to include gravity. String "theory" is trying to do that, the main problem with string theory, as I understand it, is it doesn't make any predictions that are testable. People are trying hard to come up with some though and maybe they will and maybe they will not.

I guess the important thing here for this thread though is to understand what a theory is in the scientific world as apposed to the normal world. In the everyday world a theory is generally seen as a speculative idea about how something may work. Where in the science world it's an idea based on facts. To take your no one ever seen a black hole a bit further, no one has seen a planet around another star or even proven that the sun is powered by thermo-nuclear fusion!! Hell no one has proven that plate tectonics will create mountains. I mean have you ever seen a mountain range form? If you want to understand the benefits of astronomy then just think about GPS the fact that Europe will not have it’s own version is of little concern really. I mean why spend all that money when there is already a system that works fine and guess what it’s free.