universe,time ever existent

The steady state theory does indeed describe the creation and destruction of matter to form an equilibrium state. The problem with the theory, and the reason it was discarded was the discovery of cosmic background radiation which was one of the predictions made by the theory in support of a Universe with a beginning (The Big Bang Theory). Cosmic background radiation is more complicated than most people realise and to explain it in detail here would take to long and be of little practical value so I will give a kind of shortened, simplified explanation; The cosmic background radiation (CBR) is widely accepted to be the "afterglow" of the rapid expansion of energy some 13.8 billion years ago which signifies a beginning to our Universe. CBR is measurable to the same extent in every possible direction meaning that it does not originate from some localised source but exists uniformly across the Universe. It is also widely accepted that the Universe is expanding, this can be demonstrated by measuring the light shift of our neighbouring, and distant galaxies. You may have heard of a phenomenon known as "the doppler effect". This describes the way sound waves are compressed or stretched (change pitch) as the object emitting the sound travels towards you or away from you. It turns out that the same effect is had on light. When an object is travelling towards you it experiences a blue shift and when it is moving away from you it undergoes a red shifty. These shifts become more apparent at higher velocities and can be directly measured in galaxies. It turns out that all galaxies ever observed in the universe are travelling away from each other as they all experience a red shift. This is indicative of an expanding universe similar to the analogy of taking a deflated balloon with lots of little galaxies drawn on it, if you inflate the balloon then you will notice that all of your galaxies move away from each other. This can be recognised in our own Universe. If you try to combine the steady state theory with the measured and accepted expanding universe theory then you have a bit of a paradox. If the Universe is expanding and it has also existed for an infinite amount of time then we would not be able to witness this expansion because it would have occurred an infinite amount of time ago. The theory of everything is a good read but I think you may have taken the wrong message from it. Hawking never supported in any way the steady state theory and he actively trying to disprove it until the discovery of the CBR which he described as "The final nail in the coffin ". He always held the view that there was a beginning to the Universe and he even proved that a singularity must have existed at the beginning of the Universe. In Summary; The Universe appears to have had a beginning, space itself is expanding or "inflating", the CBR is direct evidence of a rapid inflation of energy from 13.8 billion years ago. Stephen Hawking never endorsed the steady state theory and actively researched the beginning of the Universe. Note: A good read is Lawrence Krauss' "A Universe from Nothing". That explains in great detail the quantum mechanics behind the idea of "empty" space and how things can arise from "nothing.