DEC 6, 2010 - Cosmology: Going Round in Circles is a delightful example (from The Economist, in this case) of a story that's been making the rounds in the popular science news for a week or two now, about how the Universe may be eternal after all. Cyclically eternal, that is to say: one big bang leads to a big crunch, which leads to another big bang, and so on ad infinitum. Besides sounding just right and having as solid a theoretical pedigree as any other Creation Myth of modern cosmology, this is a theory backed by some evidence, it seems: irregularities in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) which are, according to Oxford physics professor Roger Penrose, fossil remnants of black holes from before the last Big Bang. Data from satellite and balloon observations, according to analysis by physicist Vahe Gurzadyan, show the very concentric circular irregularities in the CMB predicted by the Penrose theory. Or is it some misunderstood artifact of the data? One way or another, our understanding of the beginning and end - if there's a difference - of the whole Cosmos is at stake.
