Tshika Tein

Roger Penrose, the renowned mathematician and physicist who shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for his groundbreaking work on black holes, has long challenged the conventional view that the Big Bang marked the absolute beginning of everything. Instead, he proposes a radical model called Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (CCC), in which our universe is just one in an infinite sequence of "aeons."

Each aeon begins with a Big Bang-like event and expands indefinitely, eventually reaching a cold, dilute state dominated by radiation, before seamlessly transitioning into the Big Bang of the next aeon. The key insight relies on conformal geometry, a mathematical framework that preserves angles but allows rescaling of distances. In the far future of any aeon, when all massive particles have decayed or been swallowed by black holes that then evaporate via Hawking radiation, the universe consists almost entirely of massless photons.

Without mass to define scale, the infinitely large, empty cosmos becomes conformally equivalent to an infinitely small, highly compressed one. This "conformal squashing" joins the remote future of one aeon smoothly to the Big Bang of the next, eliminating the need for an initial singularity or cosmic inflation to explain the universe's smoothness and flatness.Penrose argues that traces of previous aeons could survive in our cosmic microwave background (CMB), the relic radiation from the early universe.

He points to anomalous hot spots, dubbed "Hawking points," as potential signatures of Hawking radiation from supermassive black holes in the prior aeon, concentrated into point-like features at the crossover and appearing as circular patches roughly eight times the Moon's diameter in the CMB sky.

Although his claimed evidence remains highly controversial and disputed by many cosmologists—who argue the features align with standard inflationary models or statistical noise—the theory elegantly addresses deep issues like the second law of thermodynamics and the extraordinarily special low-entropy state at our Big Bang, suggesting it inherited order from the radiation-dominated end of the previous cycle. In this view, the Big Bang was not the origin of time and space but merely a phase transition in an eternal, cyclic cosmos.

Mo Bamba returns to the NBA! ☎️

Congrats to the Salt Lake City Stars center on signing with the Toronto Raptors. He’s our 22nd of the season.

Dillon Brooks commented on Jose Alvarado’s punch on Mark Williams during last night’s Pelicans–Suns game.

Brooks said, “That’s my teammate. I won’t let that slide. Do that to me, and your career would be over. I promise you.”

Fight of the year candidate just days before the end of the year 😬🤣

Jose Alvarado(Pelicans) vs Mark Williams(Suns)

Choose your fighter!

OFFICIAL RESULT 🥊
Jose Alvarado wins by UNANIMOUS decision 😭💀

Mark Williams:
5 punches thrown… 0 landed (0%)

Alvarado:
1 punch thrown… 1 landed (100%)

Efficiency matters.