Penrose Interview: Cycles of Time [39 minute discussion] with John Batchlor
Conformal Cyclic Cosmology
My synopsis: Penrose believes circular anomalies in the CMBR point to signals from a prior universe, before the Big Bang. Time and scale are lost in the crossover from one eon to another…this is the ‘conformal structure’ where lightcone angles are retained. At the end of one eon with masslessness, black holes evaporate, information is lost, and we return to a low entropy initial state.
CMBR observations…irregularities/deviations may reflect signals from before the big bang. Signals allow cosmological study in great detail and confirm cosmological origins.
Concentric circles observed [not published yet] come from collision of supermassive black holes before our big bang….Penrose claims this is observational evidence.
Second law of thermodynamics: randomness [entropy] is increasing. Black holes have
largest entropy in the universe [from Hawking, Beckenstein work] . Big Bang entropy was low in terms of gravitational entropy but high in all other aspects.
[11 minutes]
As time goes on cosmological acceleration is increasing…that expansion means colder and colder and emptier. Back holes are colder, but expansion will eventually cause universe to be colder and black holes will disappear via Hawking radiation…black holes disappear in a ‘pop’ and release entropy and DO swallow information….so our notion of entropy changes….must redefine definition entropy….. [explanation not clear]..but second law still works, but definition changes due to swallowing information by black holes…very end is low entropy state…..similar to big bang….
Mass finally fades away is Penrose’s theory…..sort of an anti Higgs mechanism….
[17 minutes]
‘Crossover’ from one eon to another [from one universe to another]…involves dark matter and dark energy….dark matter evaporates at the end says Penrose, but evidence
is not strong….what is crossover mechanism from masslessness of end to masslessness of a new beginning….E = hv…..mass and frequency are equivalent…mass is a clock….
No mass, no notion of time; more freedom, no distance….time and distance [scale]is lost in crossover…..but angles are retained….this is ‘conformal structure’. Null cones define
angles….hot concentrated and cold, empty…. long and short, are equivalent….without rest mass can rescale to a new ‘eon’….scale gets lost if rest mass disappears…
No mass at moment of big bang…..any electrons have lost their mass….mostly photons
And gravitons….Penrose’ theory accommodates second law…Friedman Tolman models
Could not…black holes were unknown then…
[27 minutes]
universal constants we have this eon come from the prior eon….restricts possible values…eons propagate repeatedly and sequentially…Penrose does like like Smolin’s approach of new universes forming from individual black hole singularities….
Veneziano’s string theory model is most like Penrose CCC….but Penrose theory is not string based. Evidence of prior existence, or possibility of such, marks Penrose theory.
[32 minutes]
At end of our expansion we come to masslessness and as black holes evaporate and as information is lost, we return to a low entropy state…
How do electrons and positrons lose mass…no evidence either way….
Dark energy….confirms extra term of Einstein [cosmological constant] which Einstein used for the wrong reason….it’s nature, so far, is ‘dark’…unknown…..dark matter must disappear at the end….reappears when the Higgs field reappears….
Temperature variation rings in CMBR….
some warm some cool…black holes relatively close are cool…..warm ones MIGHT have source of signal supermassive BH collisions at the center….from one eon to another….