Evidence that Universe has infinite cycle of Big Bangs from very early black holes

In Conformal Cyclic Cosmology the universe iterates through infinite cycles, with the future timelike infinity of each previous iteration being identified with the Big Bang singularity of the next.

Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (CCC) was put forward by one of Roger Penrose and his colleagues in 2005 as a possible theoretical scheme that could account for the strange imbalance between the apparently thermal nature of matter and radiation in the early universe, as opposed to the very low gravitational entropy, as evidenced by the universe’s initial uniformity and suppression of gravitational degrees of freedom. In CCC, this comes about from our big bang having been the conformal continuation of the remote future of a previous aeon whose own big bang had arisen from an aeon prior to that, etc., and the suppression of initial gravitational degrees of freedom at the big bang of each aeon is a conformal consequence of this. Likewise, our own aeon’s remote future conformally continues to become the big bang of a succeeding aeon, and so on.

It is argued that the crossover from aeon to aeon is physically plausible, despite the enormous differences in densities and temperatures at each crossover 3-surface X, because the physics on both sides of X is dominated by conformally invariant processes carried out by effectively massless particles: at each big bang, by particles whose kinetic energy totally dominates their mass, and at each aeon’s remote future by photons. Black holes eventually disappear by Hawking evaporation.

Arxiv – Apparent evidence for Hawking points in the CMB Sky

A paper by Roger Penrose, Daniel An, and Krzysztof A. Meissner presents powerful observational evidence of anomalous individual points in the very early universe that appear to be sources of vast amounts of energy, revealed as specific signals found in the CMB sky. Though seemingly problematic for cosmic inflation, the existence of such anomalous points is an implication of conformal cyclic cosmology (CCC), as what could be the Hawking points of the theory, these being the effects of the final Hawking evaporation of supermassive black holes in the aeon prior to ours. Although of extremely low temperature at emission, in CCC this radiation is enormously concentrated by the conformal compression of the entire future of the black hole, resulting in a single point at the crossover into our current aeon, with the emission of vast numbers of particles, whose effects we appear to be seeing as the observed anomalous points. Remarkably, the B-mode location found by BICEP 2 is at one of these anomalous points.

98 thoughts on “Evidence that Universe has infinite cycle of Big Bangs from very early black holes”

  1. You said, "The fact that it was preceded by a Big Crunch from a previous iteration is of limited relevance to our very existence."
    If it is irrelevant for you, it is not for me, because I think that a universe with limited existence and not in eternal mutation also condemns us to a later limited existence!

  2. Birth, beginning, and purpose are very human/life concepts. There is no need to assume that existence has a beginning.

  3. It took me three years to work through Penrose’s book ‘The Road to Reality’. I will leave reading about multiverse theory to science fiction.

  4. It took me three years to work through Penrose’s book ‘The Road to Reality’. I will leave reading about multiverse theory to science fiction.

  5. I do enjoy writing the comments, and I agree … it is most likely that I’m unwisely investing the time to do so instead of launching my own weblog of radical thinking. But my handle — GoatGuy — kind of says it all. I prefer to publicly discourse others’ works; I critique ideas, I chastise banality, I “Lock horns” with many of the glib tricksters who insist on having bûtt-nekkid simple answers for everything complicated. Thank you for the commendation, Cole. Hope you keep reading… and enjoying… my better comments. GoatGuy

  6. So one day i hope you will stop high brow shitposting and go write your own articles or scifi or something. You waste alot of time responding when you could be preaching. Most of your responses are better than most articles. I hope you make alot of money and this is just fun for you. 😉

  7. I read The Emperor’s New Mind, and was not terribly impressed. But that’s a topic which tends to cause people to go all mystical. I’m not sure that conformal cyclic cosmology actually has any useful implications. The scales involved are, as Goatguy notes, insanely beyond the human. OTOH, if true, and the physics could be understood, maybe there would be useful applications.

  8. I do enjoy writing the comments and I agree … it is most likely that I’m unwisely investing the time to do so instead of launching my own weblog of radical thinking. But my handle — GoatGuy — kind of says it all. I prefer to publicly discourse others’ works; I critique ideas I chastise banality I Lock horns”” with many of the glib tricksters who insist on having bûtt-nekkid simple answers for everything complicated. Thank you for the commendation”””” Cole. Hope you keep reading… and enjoying… my better comments. GoatGuy”””””””

  9. So one day i hope you will stop high brow shitposting and go write your own articles or scifi or something. You waste alot of time responding when you could be preaching. Most of your responses are better than most articles. I hope you make alot of money and this is just fun for you. 😉

  10. I read The Emperor’s New Mind and was not terribly impressed. But that’s a topic which tends to cause people to go all mystical.I’m not sure that conformal cyclic cosmology actually has any useful implications. The scales involved are as Goatguy notes insanely beyond the human. OTOH if true and the physics could be understood maybe there would be useful applications.

  11. I mean creating a bubble universe more or less insulates you from anything and everything that could happen in “your real” universe.

  12. There has to be an implication to general relativity if a supermassive black hole is surviving a point of infinite spatial compression. That notion has to break something in GR.

  13. How is it non-predictive when the asymmetries in the cosmic background are, in fact, predictions? It may predict specific attributes of supermassive black holes.

  14. I mean creating a bubble universe more or less insulates you from anything and everything that could happen in your real”” universe.”””

  15. There has to be an implication to general relativity if a supermassive black hole is surviving a point of infinite spatial compression. That notion has to break something in GR.

  16. How is it non-predictive when the asymmetries in the cosmic background are in fact predictions? It may predict specific attributes of supermassive black holes.

  17. If the evidence leads to it an earlier beginning, I would not see why not. But still, anything that begins to exist (in time) has a cause. Because out of nothing, nothing comes. The universe began to exist (at time=0), therefore the universe has a cause. – So oscillating model or not: the beginning is just further back in time. To suggest this means there is no cause, and this proofs an eternal universe, does not logically follow. Infinity (like infinite regress) is something that only exists in our minds, in mathematics, but it does not appear in reality.

  18. So, is the Catholic Church going to have to take back its endorsement of the the Big Bang as the creation event?

  19. If the evidence leads to it an earlier beginning I would not see why not. But still anything that begins to exist (in time) has a cause. Because out of nothing nothing comes. The universe began to exist (at time=0) therefore the universe has a cause. – So oscillating model or not: the beginning is just further back in time. To suggest this means there is no cause and this proofs an eternal universe does not logically follow. Infinity (like infinite regress) is something that only exists in our minds in mathematics but it does not appear in reality.

  20. So is the Catholic Church going to have to take back its endorsement of the the Big Bang as the creation event?

  21. Indeed. Infinite multiverses in time ensure there will be one day another one with an exact replica of Earth, with the same history and an exact copy of you in it. Albeit probably that one will be slightly fitter, handsomer and more successful than you, just to be appropriately ironic.

  22. First you would have to prove that absolute nothing can exist, because everything having a cause would still leave you at explaining how the first thing came out of nothing. 😉

  23. Not necessarily. *Our* iteration of the universe still started with the Big Bang according to this theory. That it was preceded by a Big Crunch of a previous iteration is of limited relevance to our own existence.

  24. Indeed. Infinite multiverses in time ensure there will be one day another one with an exact replica of Earth with the same history and an exact copy of you in it.Albeit probably that one will be slightly fitter handsomer and more successful than you just to be appropriately ironic.

  25. First you would have to prove that absolute nothing can exist because everything having a cause would still leave you at explaining how the first thing came out of nothing. 😉

  26. Why do you think this involves a “big crunch”? From what I understand of the topic, the universe will continue to expand and age until all matter (black holes included) decays to energy and all that is left is flat empty space. Then in the mass-less time-like future a quantum fluctuation happens and it blows up into a new universe. No crunch necessary.

  27. First, this implies a Big Crunch, which is currently contradicted by measurements of the expansion history of the universe. But at least according to Wikipedia, it’s still possible. My 2nd thought: Imagine an ultra-advanced civilization, perhaps our descendants, finding some way to survive such Big Crunch -> Big Bang transitions. Maybe they can temporarily transfer to the cosmological bulk, or hide in an artificial pocket of space, or some other exotic idea that they’d come up with. They would watch the death and rebirth of an entire universe, and then have a whole new universe to explore on the other end. A fascinating concept.

  28. Not necessarily. *Our* iteration of the universe still started with the Big Bang according to this theory. That it was preceded by a Big Crunch of a previous iteration is of limited relevance to our own existence.

  29. Why do you think this involves a big crunch””? From what I understand of the topic”””” the universe will continue to expand and age until all matter (black holes included) decays to energy and all that is left is flat empty space. Then in the mass-less time-like future a quantum fluctuation happens and it blows up into a new universe. No crunch necessary.”””

  30. First this implies a Big Crunch which is currently contradicted by measurements of the expansion history of the universe. But at least according to Wikipedia it’s still possible.My 2nd thought: Imagine an ultra-advanced civilization perhaps our descendants finding some way to survive such Big Crunch -> Big Bang transitions. Maybe they can temporarily transfer to the cosmological bulk or hide in an artificial pocket of space or some other exotic idea that they’d come up with. They would watch the death and rebirth of an entire universe and then have a whole new universe to explore on the other end. A fascinating concept.

  31. Perhaps a misinterpretation on my part. From your description it sounds like each parent universe could potentially give rise to multiple child universes, since there could be many fluctuations. Furthermore, complete decay may not be necessary for such a fluctuation to occur. That sounds more similar to other cosmological models that I’ve heard before.

  32. Perhaps a misinterpretation on my part. From your description it sounds like each parent universe could potentially give rise to multiple child universes since there could be many fluctuations. Furthermore complete decay may not be necessary for such a fluctuation to occur. That sounds more similar to other cosmological models that I’ve heard before.

  33. Almost anything will be proposed to avoid the obvious implications of the Big Bang, along with the fine tuned initial conditions, constants, and regularities of the universe.

  34. I recall there is another possibility: that the birth of blackholes ends up producing new separate space times or baby universes. These space times could be arbitrarily large from their own perspective even if they are microscopic from the outside, because space time is a funny little thing that can be stretched and compressed almost arbitrarily by gravity. The funniest thing is this potential realization comes from observing our own universe: there is a cosmic horizon beyond which we can’t see, that is, light can’t escape our observable universe (like in a blackhole) and the big bang recalls strangely the concept of white hole, which is the “anti black-hole where everything is pushed but nothing can get into it”, which sounds like the singularity that gave birth to our own universe. Nevertheless, how this scheme of turtles all the way down respects physical principles like CoE is left as an exersise to the reader.

  35. Almost anything will be proposed to avoid the obvious implications of the Big Bang along with the fine tuned initial conditions constants and regularities of the universe.

  36. I recall there is another possibility: that the birth of blackholes ends up producing new separate space times or baby universes.These space times could be arbitrarily large from their own perspective even if they are microscopic from the outside because space time is a funny little thing that can be stretched and compressed almost arbitrarily by gravity.The funniest thing is this potential realization comes from observing our own universe: there is a cosmic horizon beyond which we can’t see that is light can’t escape our observable universe (like in a blackhole) and the big bang recalls strangely the concept of white hole which is the anti black-hole where everything is pushed but nothing can get into it””” which sounds like the singularity that gave birth to our own universe.Nevertheless”” how this scheme of turtles all the way down respects physical principles like CoE is left as an exersise to the reader.”””

  37. I was going to post the solution, but realized I did it during the last iteration of the Universe, so you can check it out there…

  38. I was going to post the solution but realized I did it during the last iteration of the Universe so you can check it out there…

  39. So if I understand this correctly, the universe is left with nothing but massless particles. Without matter geometry vanishes and the universe looks ‘from the future’ like a super dense point of energy. That point of energy undergoes a period of rapid expansion and a new epoch starts. But the new epoch is at a lower energy level and the preceding one.

  40. If I’m reading it correctly, it’s less of a big crunch, than a rescaling which occurs when the density of the universe becomes effectively zero after effectively infinite time. Think of it as a register overflow in the computer simulating the universe…

  41. So if I understand this correctly the universe is left with nothing but massless particles. Without matter geometry vanishes and the universe looks ‘from the future’ like a super dense point of energy. That point of energy undergoes a period of rapid expansion and a new epoch starts. But the new epoch is at a lower energy level and the preceding one.

  42. If I’m reading it correctly it’s less of a big crunch than a rescaling which occurs when the density of the universe becomes effectively zero after effectively infinite time.Think of it as a register overflow in the computer simulating the universe…

  43. PART 2: This kind of narrative, if painted on the canvas of an INFINITE timeline, is logically “decent”. The metaverse or multiverse can be ridiculously huge, infinitely old, outrageously various, supporting all nature of Universes at the same time, where in its scale, ours is but just a mote. A wee mote perhaps, at that. And that’s safe thinking. Not terribly predictive thinking, but safe. Lets the Inner Physicist go to sleep at night. Penrose’s (et alia) Cyclic Cosmology is the logical consequence of that line of thinking. It supports (in face perhaps depends on) the idea that the super-massive black holes that are presently at the center of every spiral galaxy, and most seemingly at the center of most elliptical ones, then has a ready and safe explanation (as to why they’re so dâhmned big). They’re remanants of the prior Universes, too massive to have completely evaporated by Hawking Radiation. Left-overs, here in the present, the nuclei of almost every galaxy. Influencers of our young Universe’s gravitational fields, attractors of matter, benders of light and radiations aplenty. And destined to grow larger, maybe even in a kind of quasi-stable oscillatory state, gaining just enough matter in each Universe cycle to make up for their Hawking Evaporation losses each turn. Has a warm comfy feel to it. And this article goes on to show that perhaps the squiggles and bumps in the Cosmic Background Microwave Radiation that we’ve had the temerity to image, contain evidence of just such and so. Just love cosmology. Looks more and more like a Religious Hand, every day. LOL GoatGuy

  44. I think the biggest stumbling block to conceptualizing the Conformal Cyclic Cosmology concept is that the time-scales involved are just quite out of grappling with. For instance, we’re here — we think we know, about 13,700,000,000 years since the Big Bang — and trying to come up with answers to questions like, “When does this cycle end?” and “What will happen going forward?” and frankly it is hard to deal with answers like, “It may well take 10³⁰ years … or a billion times a billion times the present age of the Universe for the combination of cosmological expansion and the decay of the proton … to eat up all matter, and for all stellar scale black holes to evaporate”. Our lives are too short to deal with such superlatives. We live, what, 80 or so average years? 80 × 365 × 24 × 60 × 60 → 2,500,000,000 seconds. That’s still less than ⅕ the number of years (if seconds were years) of our own present Universe. Indeed, the Universe’s age, in seconds isn’t een close enough: 13.7×10⁹ • (365 × 24 × 60 × 60) → 4.32×10¹⁷ seconds. See what I mean? 10³⁰ YEARS is a preposterously long period of time, as we puny Humans measure Aeons. Yet, it doesn’t take a very insightful circumspection of the Main Opus of present day Cosmology to beg the concept of “before” and “after”. There is something decidedly irritating about a universe that started at a fairly precise time (The Big Bang), some knowable — and finite — time ago. 13,700,000,000 or 13.7 billion years back. It immediately spawns the obvious: “Well, that’s nice, but what was going on BEFORE the Big Bang?”. There isn’t an alternative! The concept of a Universe that is ONLY 13.7 billion years old demands a kind of infinity-is-the-only-answer to time that is satisfying. Think about it: if we can comfortably conjure INFINITE time, then our present blip-in-time designated as The Universe As We Know It is safe. Science perhaps may never be able to say WHY or HOW or FOR WHAT our Universe is here, is the size it

  45. I think the biggest stumbling block to conceptualizing the Conformal Cyclic Cosmology concept is that the time-scales involved are just quite out of grappling with. For instance we’re here — we think we know about 13700000000 years since the Big Bang — and trying to come up with answers to questions like When does this cycle end?”” and “”””What will happen going forward?”””” and frankly it is hard to deal with answers like”””” “”””It may well take 10³⁰ years … or a billion times a billion times the present age of the Universe for the combination of cosmological expansion and the decay of the proton … to eat up all matter”””” and for all stellar scale black holes to evaporate””””. Our lives are too short to deal with such superlatives.We live”” what 80 or so average years? 80 × 365 × 24 × 60 × 60 → 25000000 seconds. That’s still less than ⅕ the number of years (if seconds were years) of our own present Universe. Indeed the Universe’s age in seconds isn’t een close enough: 13.7×10⁹ • (365 × 24 × 60 × 60) → 4.32×10¹⁷ seconds. See what I mean? 10³⁰ YEARS is a preposterously long period of time as we puny Humans measure Aeons.Yet”” it doesn’t take a very insightful circumspection of the Main Opus of present day Cosmology to beg the concept of “”””before”””” and “”””after””””. There is something decidedly irritating about a universe that started at a fairly precise time (The Big Bang)”” some knowable — and finite — time ago. 137000″”000 or 13.7 billion years back. It immediately spawns the obvious: “”””Well”” that’s nice”” but what was going on BEFORE the Big Bang?””””. There isn’t an alternative! The concept of a Universe that is ONLY 13.7 billion years old demands a kind of infinity-is-the-only-answer to time that is satisfying. Think about it: if we can comfortably conjure INFINITE time”” then our present blip-in-time designated as The Universe As We Know It is safe. Science perhaps may never be able to say WHY or HOW or FOR WHAT our Univers”

  46. Lee Smolin and his Cosmological natural selection, or “fecund universes theory”. I like that possibility very much, it feels natural.

  47. Lee Smolin and his Cosmological natural selection or fecund universes theory””. I like that possibility very much”””” it feels natural.”””

  48. PART 2:This kind of narrative if painted on the canvas of an INFINITE timeline is logically decent””. The metaverse or multiverse can be ridiculously huge”” infinitely old outrageously various supporting all nature of Universes at the same time where in its scale ours is but just a mote. A wee mote perhaps at that.And that’s safe thinking. Not terribly predictive thinking but safe. Lets the Inner Physicist go to sleep at night. Penrose’s (et alia) Cyclic Cosmology is the logical consequence of that line of thinking. It supports (in face perhaps depends on) the idea that the super-massive black holes that are presently at the center of every spiral galaxy and most seemingly at the center of most elliptical ones then has a ready and safe explanation (as to why they’re so dâhmned big). They’re remanants of the prior Universes too massive to have completely evaporated by Hawking Radiation. Left-overs here in the present the nuclei of almost every galaxy. Influencers of our young Universe’s gravitational fields attractors of matter benders of light and radiations aplenty. And destined to grow larger maybe even in a kind of quasi-stable oscillatory state gaining just enough matter in each Universe cycle to make up for their Hawking Evaporation losses each turn. Has a warm comfy feel to it. And this article goes on to show that perhaps the squiggles and bumps in the Cosmic Background Microwave Radiation that we’ve had the temerity to image contain evidence of just such and so. Just love cosmology. Looks more and more like a Religious Hand”” every day.LOLGoatGuy”””””””

  49. Isn’t there a philosophical problem with this though? Philosophically, some say actualised infinities are impossible. In other words, no matter how far you go back, there’s always one more day. If there’s an infinite past, how do you get to today?

  50. Isn’t there a philosophical problem with this though? Philosophically some say actualised infinities are impossible. In other words no matter how far you go back there’s always one more day. If there’s an infinite past how do you get to today?

  51. Isn’t there a philosophical problem with this though? Philosophically, some say actualised infinities are impossible. In other words, no matter how far you go back, there’s always one more day. If there’s an infinite past, how do you get to today?

  52. There has to be an implication to general relativity if a supermassive black hole is surviving a point of infinite spatial compression. That notion has to break something in GR.

  53. How is it non-predictive when the asymmetries in the cosmic background are, in fact, predictions? It may predict specific attributes of supermassive black holes.

  54. I do enjoy writing the comments, and I agree … it is most likely that I’m unwisely investing the time to do so instead of launching my own weblog of radical thinking. But my handle — GoatGuy — kind of says it all. I prefer to publicly discourse others’ works; I critique ideas, I chastise banality, I “Lock horns” with many of the glib tricksters who insist on having bûtt-nekkid simple answers for everything complicated. Thank you for the commendation, Cole. Hope you keep reading… and enjoying… my better comments. GoatGuy

  55. So one day i hope you will stop high brow shitposting and go write your own articles or scifi or something. You waste alot of time responding when you could be preaching. Most of your responses are better than most articles. I hope you make alot of money and this is just fun for you. 😉

  56. I read The Emperor’s New Mind, and was not terribly impressed. But that’s a topic which tends to cause people to go all mystical.

    I’m not sure that conformal cyclic cosmology actually has any useful implications. The scales involved are, as Goatguy notes, insanely beyond the human. OTOH, if true, and the physics could be understood, maybe there would be useful applications.

  57. PART 2:
    This kind of narrative, if painted on the canvas of an INFINITE timeline, is logically “decent”. The metaverse or multiverse can be ridiculously huge, infinitely old, outrageously various, supporting all nature of Universes at the same time, where in its scale, ours is but just a mote. A wee mote perhaps, at that.

    And that’s safe thinking.

    Not terribly predictive thinking, but safe.
    Lets the Inner Physicist go to sleep at night.

    Penrose’s (et alia) Cyclic Cosmology is the logical consequence of that line of thinking. It supports (in face perhaps depends on) the idea that the super-massive black holes that are presently at the center of every spiral galaxy, and most seemingly at the center of most elliptical ones, then has a ready and safe explanation (as to why they’re so dâhmned big). They’re remanants of the prior Universes, too massive to have completely evaporated by Hawking Radiation. Left-overs, here in the present, the nuclei of almost every galaxy. Influencers of our young Universe’s gravitational fields, attractors of matter, benders of light and radiations aplenty. And destined to grow larger, maybe even in a kind of quasi-stable oscillatory state, gaining just enough matter in each Universe cycle to make up for their Hawking Evaporation losses each turn.

    Has a warm comfy feel to it.

    And this article goes on to show that perhaps the squiggles and bumps in the Cosmic Background Microwave Radiation that we’ve had the temerity to image, contain evidence of just such and so.

    Just love cosmology.
    Looks more and more like a Religious Hand, every day.
    LOL

    GoatGuy

  58. I think the biggest stumbling block to conceptualizing the Conformal Cyclic Cosmology concept is that the time-scales involved are just quite out of grappling with.

    For instance, we’re here — we think we know, about 13,700,000,000 years since the Big Bang — and trying to come up with answers to questions like, “When does this cycle end?” and “What will happen going forward?” and frankly it is hard to deal with answers like, “It may well take 10³⁰ years … or a billion times a billion times the present age of the Universe for the combination of cosmological expansion and the decay of the proton … to eat up all matter, and for all stellar scale black holes to evaporate”.

    Our lives are too short to deal with such superlatives.

    We live, what, 80 or so average years? 80 × 365 × 24 × 60 × 60 → 2,500,000,000 seconds. That’s still less than ⅕ the number of years (if seconds were years) of our own present Universe. Indeed, the Universe’s age, in seconds isn’t een close enough: 13.7×10⁹ • (365 × 24 × 60 × 60) → 4.32×10¹⁷ seconds. See what I mean? 10³⁰ YEARS is a preposterously long period of time, as we puny Humans measure Aeons.

    Yet, it doesn’t take a very insightful circumspection of the Main Opus of present day Cosmology to beg the concept of “before” and “after”.

    There is something decidedly irritating about a universe that started at a fairly precise time (The Big Bang), some knowable — and finite — time ago. 13,700,000,000 or 13.7 billion years back. It immediately spawns the obvious: “Well, that’s nice, but what was going on BEFORE the Big Bang?”. There isn’t an alternative! The concept of a Universe that is ONLY 13.7 billion years old demands a kind of infinity-is-the-only-answer to time that is satisfying.

    Think about it: if we can comfortably conjure INFINITE time, then our present blip-in-time designated as The Universe As We Know It is safe. Science perhaps may never be able to say WHY or HOW or FOR WHAT our Universe is here, is the size it is, has the physical constants and masses, energies and motions it has, that have given rise to everything from galaxy clusters to fruit flies, but one thing is for certain: there is a LOT of matter. But having a Universe — just like ours — that periodically explodes, that condenses the absolutely unimaginable energies as the tiny quantum particles of matter (condensed energy!), that go on to form primordial hydrogen, helium, a few of the light elements … which in turn are naturally full of acoustic (!!!) waves, some amplifying over lightyears of distance scales into swirls of self-attracting gravitational clumps… to form stars, some large, many small … where the larger ones quickly (millions of years!) go on to collapse and explode as supernovæ, which then blasts out enormous spherical or dumbell shaped clouds of rapidly expanding new elements and isotopes … the pushing of which then begets ever more stellar systems … and these in aggregate look like galaxies of various kinds:……

  59. So if I understand this correctly, the universe is left with nothing but massless particles. Without matter geometry vanishes and the universe looks ‘from the future’ like a super dense point of energy. That point of energy undergoes a period of rapid expansion and a new epoch starts. But the new epoch is at a lower energy level and the preceding one.

  60. If I’m reading it correctly, it’s less of a big crunch, than a rescaling which occurs when the density of the universe becomes effectively zero after effectively infinite time.

    Think of it as a register overflow in the computer simulating the universe…

  61. Almost anything will be proposed to avoid the obvious implications of the Big Bang, along with the fine tuned initial conditions, constants, and regularities of the universe.

  62. I recall there is another possibility: that the birth of blackholes ends up producing new separate space times or baby universes.

    These space times could be arbitrarily large from their own perspective even if they are microscopic from the outside, because space time is a funny little thing that can be stretched and compressed almost arbitrarily by gravity.

    The funniest thing is this potential realization comes from observing our own universe: there is a cosmic horizon beyond which we can’t see, that is, light can’t escape our observable universe (like in a blackhole) and the big bang recalls strangely the concept of white hole, which is the “anti black-hole where everything is pushed but nothing can get into it”, which sounds like the singularity that gave birth to our own universe.

    Nevertheless, how this scheme of turtles all the way down respects physical principles like CoE is left as an exersise to the reader.

  63. Perhaps a misinterpretation on my part. From your description it sounds like each parent universe could potentially give rise to multiple child universes, since there could be many fluctuations. Furthermore, complete decay may not be necessary for such a fluctuation to occur. That sounds more similar to other cosmological models that I’ve heard before.

  64. Why do you think this involves a “big crunch”? From what I understand of the topic, the universe will continue to expand and age until all matter (black holes included) decays to energy and all that is left is flat empty space. Then in the mass-less time-like future a quantum fluctuation happens and it blows up into a new universe. No crunch necessary.

  65. First, this implies a Big Crunch, which is currently contradicted by measurements of the expansion history of the universe. But at least according to Wikipedia, it’s still possible.

    My 2nd thought: Imagine an ultra-advanced civilization, perhaps our descendants, finding some way to survive such Big Crunch -> Big Bang transitions. Maybe they can temporarily transfer to the cosmological bulk, or hide in an artificial pocket of space, or some other exotic idea that they’d come up with. They would watch the death and rebirth of an entire universe, and then have a whole new universe to explore on the other end. A fascinating concept.

  66. Not necessarily. *Our* iteration of the universe still started with the Big Bang according to this theory. That it was preceded by a Big Crunch of a previous iteration is of limited relevance to our own existence.

  67. Indeed. Infinite multiverses in time ensure there will be one day another one with an exact replica of Earth, with the same history and an exact copy of you in it.

    Albeit probably that one will be slightly fitter, handsomer and more successful than you, just to be appropriately ironic.

  68. First you would have to prove that absolute nothing can exist, because everything having a cause would still leave you at explaining how the first thing came out of nothing. 😉

  69. If the evidence leads to it an earlier beginning, I would not see why not. But still, anything that begins to exist (in time) has a cause. Because out of nothing, nothing comes. The universe began to exist (at time=0), therefore the universe has a cause. – So oscillating model or not: the beginning is just further back in time. To suggest this means there is no cause, and this proofs an eternal universe, does not logically follow. Infinity (like infinite regress) is something that only exists in our minds, in mathematics, but it does not appear in reality.

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