Penrose: CCC predicts BICEP2 B-modes due to void magnetic fields, correlated to CMB Hawking Points

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Very recently, Roger Penrose, along with Daniel An and Krzystztof Meissner, have submitted a new paper to PRL. In the new paper they present new empirical findings which support CCC. It doesn't seem to be out yet though, I can't find it anywhere, but I will place the link here when it is out.

Penrose recently spoke about this new paper in a public lecture on CCC:

Excerpt from the Foundations 2018 Public Lecture by Sir Roger Penrose: Worlds Before the Big Bang: Colliding Black Holes and the Creation of Dark Matter, 11 July 2018, Utrecht University .

Penrose, using his theory of Conformal Cyclical Cosmology (CCC) which is an alternative cosmological theory to inflation theory, gives a reinterpretation of earlier infamous experimental results, namely of the B-modes seen by the BICEP2 team, which were initially seen as evidence of primordial gravitational waves (in favor of inflation and in disagreement with CCC) and quite quickly thereafter ascribed as noise signals caused by intragalactic dust.

In a new paper, Penrose et al., on the basis of CCC argue that the detected B-modes in the BICEP2 data might actually be due to magnetic fields in intergalactic voids created by galactic clusters in a previous aeon, instead of due to dust. They demonstrate a statistically significant correlation between these B-modes and the location of the Hawking Points on the CMB, potentially solving the problem of the origin of void magnetic fields.

In other words, his argument can be summarized as the following:
1) CCC predicts that massless particles can convey signals that traverse aeons.
2) Merging black holes in galactic clusters from the previous aeon send out gravitational waves.
3) The imprint of these gravitational waves from the previous aeon are visible as concentric sets of circles in the CMB.
4) Evaporating black holes in galactic clusters from a previous aeon send out Hawking radiation.
5) Hawking radiation is visible on the CMB as points called Hawking Points.
6) Hawking Points are at the centre of the concentric set of rings on the CMB.
7) Another possible source of the BICEP2 detected B-modes (instead of dust) could be due to intergalactic void magnetic fields within our universe.
8) Intergalactic void magnetic fields have no known source, i.e. their origin is a mystery in astrophysics/astronomy.
9) The intergalactic void magnetic fields in our universe are correlated with the location of Hawking points on the CMB.
10) The source of intergalactic void magnetic fields in our universe are galactic clusters from a previous aeon.

 

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Without addressing any of the other imaginative claims, 10) appears particularly egregious. How does a magnetic field persist after the source departs?

 

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7) Another possible source of the BICEP2 detected B-modes (instead of dust) could be due to intergalactic void magnetic fields within our universe.

Wait... the scientific community spent a lot of time on that and came to the conclusion that BICEP2 saw dust instead of something else. The best estimate for the polarization without dust is now "basically zero within the measurement accuracy". If the model predicts large polarization without dust, it is ruled out.
Trying to use the old BICEP2 result that way looks like arguing that superluminal neutrinos would be favored by OPERA. They are not - they had a measurement error which is now understood.

 

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Without addressing any of the other imaginative claims, 10) appears particularly egregious. How does a magnetic field persist after the source departs?

That's a good question but somewhat irrelevant for the discussion, seeing that its an observational fact that there exist large-scale very weak magnetic fields in intergalactic voids where there is no matter at all. These magnetic fields currently have no known explanation. Here is another paper, which gives some background information on these IGMFs and offers inflationary models as an explanation for magnetogenesis.

Wait... the scientific community spent a lot of time on that and came to the conclusion that BICEP2 saw dust instead of something else. The best estimate for the polarization without dust is now "basically zero within the measurement accuracy". If the model predicts large polarization without dust, it is ruled out.
Trying to use the old BICEP2 result that way looks like arguing that superluminal neutrinos would be favored by OPERA. They are not - they had a measurement error which is now understood.

Actually the scientific community spent a lot of time on this and concluded that the B-modes are definitely from within the universe and not a feature of the CMB, i.e. they are due to intra-universe noise and not an actual CMB signal. The most likely candidate for this noise is intragalactic dust; whether this noise signal is due to intragalactic dust or something else is what Penrose is disputing.

It should be clear that CCC predicts no B-modes in the CMB; if the original interpretation of the BICEP2 B-modes as primordial gravitational waves had been true this would have actually directly falsified CCC. This originally caused Penrose to worry himself and before the dust explanation was offered Penrose had theorized it might be due to magnetic fields in our universe.

Afterwards statistical analysis was done using WMAP, Planck and BICEP2 data. They found that some IGMF in the sky line up significantly with Hawking Points on WMAP/Planck data. These same points also line up with the coordinates of the B-modes in the BICEP2 data. The question thus is, is this just a coincidence?

 

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Actually the scientific community spent a lot of time on this and concluded that the B-modes are definitely from within the universe and not a feature of the CMB, i.e. they are due to intra-universe noise and not an actual CMB signal. The most likely candidate for this noise is intragalactic dust; whether this noise signal is due to intragalactic dust or something else is what Penrose is disputing.

I got a different impression.
See e.g. Gravitational waves discovery now officially dead

A joint analysis of data recorded by the team's BICEP2 telescope at the South Pole and by the European spacecraft Planck has revealed that the signal can be entirely attributed to dust in the Milky Way rather than having a more ancient, cosmic origin.
[...]
“This joint work has shown that the detection of primordial B-modes is no longer robust once the emission from Galactic dust is removed,”

Removing dust the measurement is compatible with zero. That does not rule out smaller contributions from elsewhere, but it rules out that the observed signal strength comes mainly from something new.

 

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I got a different impression.
See e.g. Gravitational waves discovery now officially dead

I followed it closely back then as well, so have already read the linked joint analysis paper.

Removing dust the measurement is compatible with zero. That does not rule out smaller contributions from elsewhere, but it rules out that the observed signal strength comes mainly from something new.

As I said before, the observed signal is definitely not from something new, it is definitely due to a known source of foreground contamination. Both intragalactic dust and intergalactic magnetic fields are astrophysical phenomena capable of causing the type of polarization seen, so as you say simply ruling contributions from one or the other out beforehand is premature.

The fact remains that correlations between the coordinates of HPs and B-modes on CMB data were found, which also line up with void IGMF. This in itself warrants further investigation, with primordial gravitational waves being pretty much completely irrelevant to the matter at hand.

 

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Update: Their preprint paper is finally available:
Apparent evidence for Hawking points in the CMB Sky

This paper presents powerful observational evidence of anomalous individual points in the very early universe that appear to be sources of vast amounts of energy, revealed as specific signals found in the CMB sky. Though seemingly problematic for cosmic inflation, the existence of such anomalous points is an implication of conformal cyclic cosmology (CCC), as what could be the Hawking points of the theory, these being the effects of the final Hawking evaporation of supermassive black holes in the aeon prior to ours. Although of extremely low temperature at emission, in CCC this radiation is enormously concentrated by the conformal compression of the entire future of the black hole, resulting in a single point at the crossover into our current aeon, with the emission of vast numbers of particles, whose effects we appear to be seeing as the observed anomalous points. Remarkably, the B-mode location found by BICEP 2 is at one of these anomalous points.