The theory of the hot Big Bang, which proposed that the
Universe as we know it today arose from a hotter, denser, more uniform past, was one
of the biggest scientific accomplishments of the twentieth century.
Initially presented as a viable alternative to some of the more accepted explanations
for the expanding Universe, it was unexpectedly confirmed in the mid-1960s with the discovery
of the "primaeval fireball" that remained from that early, hot-and-dense state: today
known as the Cosmic Microwave Background.
The Big Bang idea has reigned supreme as the explanation characterizing our cosmic origins
for more than 50 years, with an early, inflationary phase preceding and setting it up.
Astronomers and astrophysicists have repeatedly challenged cosmic inflation and the Big Bang,
but the alternatives have faded as new, critical discoveries have come in.
But have you ever thought about what happened before the Big Bang?
Scientists appear to have discovered evidence that another universe existed before our own.
According to a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, there was a prior universe before the Big
Bang, and proof for its existence can still be found in black holes.
But is there any evidence to back up these claims?
Stay with us as we investigate what existed prior to the Big Bang!
The Big Bang is frequently depicted as the beginning of everything: space, time, and
the birth of matter and energy.
This makes sense from an archaic perspective.
If the Universe we perceive now is expanding and becoming less dense, it must have been
smaller and denser in the past.
If radiation — such as photons — exists in that Universe, the wavelength of that radiation
would stretch as the Universe expands, implying that it cools through time and was hotter
in the past.
So far, scientists have only been able to pinpoint the location of the Big Bang to fractions
of a second after it occurred.
We've never been able to figure out what caused the big bang or what came before it, but that
appears to have changed.
Sir Roger Penrose, a theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate, has proposed a notion
that our universe did not emerge from nothing but rather is a product of a previous universe.
Penrose is a well-known mathematician and physicist who has made significant contributions
to the General Theory of Relativity and cosmology.
He won the Wolf Prize in Physics in 1988, which he shared with Stephen Hawkings, and
the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2020 for "discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction
of the general theory of relativity" He is recognized as one of the finest living physicists,
and his theories are well-liked in the scientific world, so when he proposed his theory on the
origins of the universe, the scientific community was taken aback.
Penrose proposed the conformal cyclic cosmology model in his book, Cycle of Times, which is
an offshoot of Einstein's general relativity but actually contradicts many of Einstein's
original concepts.
Penrose's cosmology model, in contrast to the commonly accepted multiverse concept,
claims that the cosmos occurs in phases rather than the multidimensional theories that most
scientists have come to accept.
Penrose announced the discovery of evidence based on centric circles while investigating
both pre-existing and current versions of the cosmic microwave background, or CMB.
He added that based on his observations, he concluded that an earlier Universe existed
before the Big Bang that formed ours.
According to his book, "the Big Bang was a result of the final stages of the pre-existing
Universe," which in its end only contained evaporating black holes.
He claimed that towards the end of the Universe, all matter was contained within these evaporating
black holes, which were nothing more than photons existing outside of space and time.
"These photons were essentially no different than the very first photons observed in the
first few milliseconds of the big bang," he claims.
That is, the singularity that caused the Big Bang is akin to an infinitely expanding pre-existing
Universe.
The origins of Penrose's idea may be found in a study of the cosmic microwave background,
which is the oldest electromagnetic radiation present during the universe's early beginnings.
CMB, also known as Relic radiation by physicists, is observed all around the universe.
They are the most important source of information about the thermal radioactive state of the
early Universe.
CMB dates back to when the first atoms were created during the recombination phase.
It was calculated that it existed 375 thousand years after the Big Bang.
This may appear to be a long time, but in the grand scope of the observable universe,
it is quite short and provides the best picture we have of the early Universe.
Through the use of radio telescopes, we have been able to view the CMB, which reveals a
faint glow occurring in the vacuum of space between galaxies and stars.
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) allowed Penrose to obtain his information because
it is a snapshot of the early Universe when temperatures were low enough for protons and
electrons to create hydrogen atoms.
Penrose, together with coauthors Krzysztof Antoni Meissner, Daniel Ann, and Pawel Nurowski,
reported finding anomalous regions in the cosmic microwave background data, expanding
our understanding of the cosmos.
They theorized that these discrepancies might be the remnants of signals or energies from
supermassive black holes that existed in the universe before our own but have since evaporated.
Since black holes are the only objects in the universe capable of withstanding and producing
a dense enough level of energy comparable to the Big Bang, they concluded that these
spots were caused by the evaporation of supermassive black holes.
As the only structures powerful enough to create such ripples of gravitational waves
in the early stages of our own Universe, Penrose hypothesized that his analysis of the CMB
reveals preliminary proof the collision of supermassive black holes in a pre-existing
universe.
Penrose investigated the practical implications of the second law of thermodynamics as it
applies to the eventual state of the universe to support his views.
Penrose disagrees with Stephen Hawking's population theory, which argues that all information
is lost when matter or energy falls into a black hole, even if much of this is based
on current theories in theoretical physics.
It just so happens that Penrose isn't the only physicist who disagrees with the notion
that black holes are nothing more than gaping maws that gulp up all the energy in the universe.
Instead, they break energy down into photons that exist outside of space, time, and the
event horizon.
These photons, which Penrose says exist outside of space and time, may form the basis of a
new Universe after the Big Bang.
After stating that all matter in the observable universe decays into Photon energy in a cold
expanded universe over unimaginably long spans of time, maybe trillions of years, Penrose
moves on to explain how this process occurs.
His explanation of the time between the Big Bang and the endless growth of the universe
was that it was a "Aeon."
The preceding Aeon's endless growth and oblivion becomes the building block in the Big Bang
state of the next Aeon cycle.
At the point when one Aeon ends and another begins, space and time become meaningless,
making the beginning of the new Aeon appear relatively insignificant.
Penrose claims the Big Bang's Singularity is not as mysterious as previously thought.
He thinks he's found evidence of comparable singularities being at the event horizon of
black holes.
He believes that the CMB cyclical streaks are caused by photons that originated in the
black holes of the previous Universe and have since made their way into our own.
These CMB circle streaks may not look like much to the untrained eye, but they contain
low energy left over from a prior Universe, according to physicists.
He thinks that after an unfathomable period of cosmic expansion, the Big Bang of the next
Aeon can be linked to cosmic energy that had been consumed in black holes in the preceding
Aeon.
Besides lending credence to his own hypothesis of a previous universe, Penrose's prediction
of an infinitely expanding universe in the final stages of its existence clearly contradicts
the Big Crunch, another widely held theory about the end of the universe.
Previously, cosmologists had proposed that the ongoing expansion of the universe was
evidence that the cosmos were still in their middle stages of existence.
They predicted that as time went on, the expansion of the universe would be slowed by the mutual
attraction of all matter.
All of the mass in the universe exerts a gravitational pull on everything else, hence this pull is
what the Big Crunch Theory says will ultimately decide the fate of the universe.
This would cause the contraction that would result in the final collapse of the Universe.
The limitless density and temperature of this crunch would lead to a new universe's birth
through the process of a second big bang.
This concept is not too distant from Penrose's Theory in its basic tenet that the death of
one Universe gives rise to the creation of another, but it is incorrect in one important
respect.
There has been no slowdown in the rate at which the universe is expanding.
In fact, recent astronomical observations suggest that the expansion rate of the universe
is increasing.
Data shows that the rate at which faraway stars and galaxies are receding from Earth-based
telescopes is accelerating with time.
These findings were backed up by a study of how rapidly the light from supernovas travelled,
essentially proving that scientists' long-held suspicions that the rate of expansion of the
Universe is constant were incorrect.
Since the effects of gravity do not appear to have any effect on the expansion rate of
the cosmos, let alone act on it to the point of collapse, this rapid expansion discredits
the hypothesis of the Big Crunch.
It lends credence to Penrose's argument that the universe would expand forever, eventually
reaching the point when even black holes disintegrate into photons, ushering in the creation of
a new universe and the beginning of a new Aeon.
While all of this is still a hotly discussed theory in the field of physics, Penrose offered
a more controversial theory concerning not just those supposed to exist in this universe,
but also in the universe before ours.
Penrose proposed the Fermi Paradox, which he describes as a highly implausible Theory
due to a lack of evidence but highly probable in the support of extraterrestrial civilizations.
While the CMB is generally uniform, there are minor temperature changes.
The magnitude at which these fluctuations occur reveals information about the overall
structure of our Universe.
However, there are some regions where the changes are more intense than expected.
These anomalies aren't particularly exceptional, but they're intriguing enough that some have
theorized they could be the result of another Universe.
Such fluctuations, however, are unlikely to occur in Conformal Cyclic Cosmology since
the new and old Universes join when they are smooth.
However, if the CCC theory is correct, some super-advanced race in the old Universe may
deliberately imprint the new Universe with a signal or message.
We should be able to detect such a message in theory.
Let us know in the comments if you believe there was another universe before ours.