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Since the discovery of cosmic microwave background radiation in 1965, the Big Bang theory has been the dominant model of our Universe’s origin. In the ensuing decades, an obvious and yet still deeply unsettled question has emerged at the core of cosmology: what happened before it? While many scientists hold firm that there’s no decent evidence to support the notion that anything existed before the Big Bang, new hypotheses have cracked open the door for the possibility.
The UK mathematical physicist Roger Penrose, a professor emeritus at Oxford University and co-recipient of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics, is a convert to the camp of thinkers entertaining the notion of a pre-Big Bang state. In this interview with Robert Lawrence Kuhn for the PBS series Closer to Truth, Penrose details a somewhat mind-boggling idea he’s advanced known as the ‘conformal cyclic cosmology’ hypothesis, which proposes that our Universe is just one in an infinite series.
For more on the prospect of a before, before the Big Bang, watch Aeon Video’s interview with Tim Maudlin, a professor of philosophy at New York University.
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Death
Even in modern secular societies, belief in an afterlife persists. Why?
9 minutes
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Nature and landscape
Take a serene hike through an ancient forest, inspired by a Miyazaki masterpiece
6 minutes
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Design and fashion
The mundane becomes mesmerising in this deep dive into segmented displays
14 minutes
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Physics
A song of ice, fire and jelly – exploring the physics and history of the trumpet
9 minutes
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Spirituality
Trek alongside spiritual pilgrims on a treacherous journey across Pakistan
6 minutes
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Thinkers and theories
Photographs offer a colonialist window to the past – one that must be challenged
14 minutes
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Animals and humans
An artist and ants collaborate on an exhibit of ‘tiny Abstract Expressionist paintings’
5 minutes
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Mathematics
How a curious question about colouring maps changed mathematics forever
9 minutes
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Meaning and the good life
The world turns vivid, strange and philosophical for one plane crash survivor
16 minutes