A What is the Current Status of Cyclic Cosmology and its Relation to M-Theory?

[Jim]

Its been formalized for ~15 yrs now by Steinhardt & Turok; Wiki sez it has problems, but will not elaborate.
My concern is that despite their denial, their version of CC is built on branes, which are
of course a Very speculative basis, since it originates in M-theory. Worse, S&T do not
seem tb developing their CC model any further.

 

[Chronos]

For a fairly recent discussion straight from the horses mouth see the interview with Paul Steinhardt from SA dated 12/01/2014: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/physicist-slams-cosmic-theory-he-helped-conceive/

 

[Jim]

Thanx, & will check Paul's intvw out. In an earlier paper for gen. readership, Paul implied that M-theory was not necessary, just a "useful basis to build their cyclic model upon". Still not sure I believe this, as their `std.model' relies heavily upon the Branes of M-th.at every turn of the road. Turok has a recent paper indicating he's still working on & improving it.
Another question is why no definitive observations ? S&T pointed out in their book, `Endless Universe' that their theory predix everything inflation does except primordial grav waves. BICEP2 could've shot down their cyclic model if these B-mode grav waves had been discovered, but were not. So far, only this failure of inflation would appear to support the cyclic model, but no direct evidence exists.