Today, some astronomers are inclined to believe that there may be evidence of the existence of past universes in space, namely the remnants of black holes preserved from the previous cycle.
According to New Scientist, the idea is based on what is called conformal cyclic cosmology (CCC). This is the theory that our Universe goes through constant infinite cycles (eons) of compression and the subsequent Big Bang, followed by a compression to a point and another Big Bang.
Although most of the universe is destroyed during the transition from one cycle to another, the authors of the theory of conformal cyclic cosmologists argue that some spectra of electromagnetic radiation can survive the recycling process. The results of this study are posted on the arXiv resource.
"What we consider to be relict radiation, that is, the background cosmic radiation that arose at the time of primary hydrogen recombination, may in fact be the remnant of the Universe that" evaporated "in the previous aeon," writes Roger Penrose, an physics from the University of Oxford and co-author of the CCC theory.
One piece of evidence for this crazy theory comes from the so-called Hawking Points, named after Stephen Hawking, who first hypothesized their existence.
Stephen Hawking suggested that black holes are not actually eternal and gradually decay, while emitting radiation known as Hawking radiation. Penrose and his colleagues suggest that if the existence of this radiation can be experimentally confirmed, then it will carry information about the moment of transition of the Old Universe to the New.
It is believed that Hawking points can appear in the residual temperature of the Universe, known as the cosmic microwave background (the Soviet astrophysicist I. S. Shklovsky introduced the more accurate and generally accepted term relic radiation to denote CMB (cosmic microwave background)). Hawking points will appear in the CMB anisotropy panorama as particularly bright circles of light known as B-modes.
Promotional video:
Previously, these anomalous points in the CMB were thought to be caused by either gravitational lenses or large clusters of interstellar dust. But Penrose and his colleagues offer a more intriguing answer, suggesting that all of these "temperature spots" are remnants of a past universe. To date, at least one of the Hawking points has been found by the BICEP2 project, which aims to map the CMB.
“Despite the fact that the existence of these temperature anomalies seems to be very problematic for the Inflationary model of the Universe, the theory of conformal cyclic cosmology explains all this remarkably,” the study's conclusions read.
Although the theory of the recirculating universe looks great, it is not without controversy. In particular, modern cosmology says that as a result of the Big Bang and the subsequent expansion, the Universe has become not compact enough to again collapse into one point.
In addition, so far there has not been found one hundred percent proof of the emission of Hawking radiation by black holes, and one of the found similar sources is still a Hawking point only hypothetically. Therefore, although this is all a very interesting theory, astrophysicists still have a lot of work to do before finally proving the existence of the previous universe.
