A group of physicists, including Roger Penrose, have found evidence for conformal cyclic cosmology - a theoretical model according to which the distant future of one universe turns out to be a singularity from which another universe begins its expansion. According to the researchers, fluctuations in the cosmic radio wave background, called B-modes of polarization, are a consequence of the evaporation of black holes in the previous Universe. The preprint of the article is published in the arXiv.org repository.
Conformal cyclic cosmology was proposed by Penrose in 2005, the scientist tried to explain the discrepancy between the second law of thermodynamics, according to which the entropy of the Universe should increase with time, and the inflationary model, which implies that a random choice of certain cosmological constants led the Universe to its current state (that is, the Universe was more disordered at birth). Penrose suggested that the apparent disorder actually belonged to the previous Universe with the maximum level of entropy, but only part of the states (degrees of freedom) passed from it through the Big Bang singularity.
In other words, Penrose believed that an infinitely expanding universe, in which all matter turns into electromagnetic radiation, is mathematically indistinguishable from the singularity with which the next universe will begin to exist. According to a physicist, if this hypothesis is correct, then anomalies must exist in the cosmic radio wave background.
In their new work, the scientist and his colleagues have shown that such anomalies can be relic B-modes of polarization - the so-called "swirls" of polarization of the relict radiation, which arise due to inhomogeneities in the medium due to gravitational waves. The researchers showed that the twenty B-modes recorded by the BICEP experiment detectors in 2014 were evaporating supermassive black holes in the previous Universe. The timelines of these holes can be thought of as "Hawking points" leaving a gravitational trail in the new universe.