[Oe List ...] NY Times editorial - AWE

[LAURELCG at aol.com]

Editorial
 
Before the  Boom
Published: November 30, 2010
New York Times 
 
Astronomers and astrophysicists have given us insight into what happened in 
 the first trillionths-of-a-second after the Big Bang, nearly 14 billion 
years  ago. But the current cosmological hypothesis is that before the Big 
Bang there  was nothing.  
Now Roger Penrose, the eminent British mathematician, is arguing that there 
 is physical evidence that may predate the Big Bang. In a recent paper, he 
and  his co-author, the physicist V. G. Gurzadyan, describe a pattern of  
concentric circles detected against the universal backdrop of cosmic microwave 
 radiation generated by the Big Bang. These circles, they say, may be  
gravitational waves generated by collisions of superbig black holes before the  
Big Bang.  
The two scientists go even further, claiming that the evidence also 
suggests  that our universe may “be but one aeon in a (perhaps unending) succession 
of  such aeons.” What we think of as our “universe” may simply be one link 
in a  chain of universes, each beginning with a big bang and ending in a 
way that  sends detectable gravitational waves into the next universe.  
The argument is highly controversial. But if the circles the two scientists 
 have detected stand up to further examination — if they’re not the result 
of  noise or instrumental error — it could radically change the way we 
think about  our universe. And the notion is no more radical than that of some 
cosmologists  who argue that our universe is only one in a multiverse — a 
possibly infinite  number of co-existing, but undetectable, universes.  
The question is: What do we do with these possibilities? Our answer is to  
marvel at them and be reminded, once again, that we live in a universe — 
however  we define it — that contains more wonders than we can begin to 
imagine. 
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