Does BICEP2 kill Conformal Cyclic Cosmology?

[twistor]

Is CCC killed by BICEP2 or there is a way in which it survives?

 

[Bill_K]

Apparently it's still alive, because Roger doesn't believe in any of this newfangled inflation stuff. According to this interview with Ira Flatow:

http://www.sciencefriday.com/segment/04/04/2014/sir-roger-penrose-cosmic-inflation-is-fantasy.html

he attributes the B-mode observations, not to gravitational waves induced by quantum fluctuations during inflation, but to primordial magnetic fields left over from the pre-Big Bang.

 

[Haelfix]

Penrose's ideas about primordial B fields is a bit crazy and should be relatively straightforward to rule out. What's harder to do is to really remove all classical sources as a viable explanation. Indeed the Bicep signal could arise from cosmic strings or other early universe sources.

See eg
http://arxiv.org/abs/1109.0542

For an example.

The good news is many of these models are testable as the resolution is increased and are already in tension with some of the findings at large angular scales. Since inflation has a very strong posterior probability after so many tests and is much cleaner theoretically I do think it is the significant leader at this point.

All of this is still the early days and it is wise to exercise caution