Radiation Rings Hint Universe Was Recycled Over and Over

[The Straight Story]

Radiation Rings Hint Universe Was Recycled Over and Over

Most cosmologists trace the birth of the universe to the Big Bang 13.7 billion years ago. But a new analysis of the relic radiation generated by that explosive event suggests the universe got its start eons earlier and has cycled through myriad episodes of birth and death, with the Big Bang merely the most recent in a series of starting guns.

That startling notion, proposed by theoretical physicist Roger Penrose of the University of Oxford in England and Vahe Gurzadyan of the Yerevan Physics Institute and Yerevan State University in Armenia, goes against the standard theory of cosmology known as inflation.

The researchers base their findings on circular patterns they discovered in the cosmic microwave background, the ubiquitous microwave glow left over from the Big Bang. The circular features indicate that the cosmos itself circles through epochs of endings and beginnings, Penrose and Gurzadyan assert. The researchers describe their controversial findings in an article posted at arXiv.org on November 17.

The circular features are regions where tiny temperature variations in the otherwise uniform microwave background are smaller than average. Those features, Penrose said, cannot be explained by the highly successful inflation theory, which posits that the infant cosmos underwent an enormous growth spurt, ballooning from something on the scale of an atom to the size of a grapefruit during the universe’s first tiny fraction of a second. Inflation would either erase such patterns or could not easily generate them.

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/11/recycled-universe/

[niyad]

1. nothing new about this theory-- heard it decades ago

still, k and r --it really is a fascinating piece

[Ezlivin]

2. See? There's the proof!

N/T

[marybourg]

5. I think we used to call it the "oscillating universe" theory. nt.

[kestrel91316]

3. I like to think of the expansions and contractions of the universe as individual

breaths of God. Though that doesn't make sense as I am firmly agnostic, lol.

[silverweb]

4. Awesome.

:)

[Speck Tater]

6. According to the most ancient Hindu texts...

The age of the earth is 4.32 billion years. Modern science puts it at 4.54 billion years. Pretty close.
The Mahabharata puts the time between the creation of the universe, through the complete cycle of expansion followed by collapse and the creation of the next new universe at 259.2 billion years. The same text tells us we are currently in the 51st cycle of creation/destruction.

Each mahakalpa (cycle) consists of four periods. The first quarter is the creation phase. The second quarter is the stable phase where worlds can form and life can come into existence. The third quarter is the destruction of the universe, and the four quarter is the latent void between where nothing exists and nothing happens. Each quarter is roughly 65 billion years long.

So this theory actually goes back to at least 2500 to 3000 years ago.

[DonCoquixote]

7. I wonder

If this might someday make the scientific basis for all the various reincarnation theories. This was the way the Hindus imagined the universe, as someone has posted here.