Was the Big Bang Preceded by Another Universe (Which Was Preceded by Another Universe)?
The current widely-held theory of life, the universe, and everything holds that at some point roughly 13.7 billion years ago everything that now is was packed into a tight little package from which sprung the Big Bang, which violently hurled everything into existence. But 13.7 billion years to get to where we are isn't enough for renowned physicist Sir Roger Penrose, and now he thinks he can prove that things aren't/weren't quite so simple. Drawing on evidence he found in the cosmic microwave background, Penrose says the Big Bang wasn't the beginning, but one in a series of cyclical Big Bangs, each of which spawned its own universe. By Penrose's estimation, our universe is not the first - nor will it be the last - to spawn from a dense mass of highly-ordered everything into the complex universe we see around us. In fact, it's that high degree of order that...