Surprised by Life

                                 Surprised by Life

Roger Penrose has won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2020. He used ingenious mathematical methods in his proof that black holes are a direct consequence of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity. Einstein did not himself believe that black holes really exist. 

His latest efforts are to develop what he calls Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (CCC) which says that, instead of a single Big Bang, the universe cycles from one eon to the next, each time starting out infinitely small and smooth before expanding and generating clumps of matter.

That matter eventually gets dragged into supermassive black holes which over the very long term (of the order of googol, that is 10 to the power of 100, years) ‘disappear with a pop’ by emitting Hawking radiation to set the stage for the next Big Bang.

Each universe leaves subtle imprints on the next cosmos when it pops into being, he told the audience: energy can ‘burst through’ from one universe to the next, at what he calls ‘Hawking points’.

However, this theory has gone down ‘very badly’ with his peers, he said. In response, there has been deathly silence: ‘that’s what we’ve had’.

Penrose is not a religious man. But using the models developed in his study of Black Holes he has calculated that the odds against an ordered universe happening by random chance are 10^10^30th to 1, against. The odds against life are 10^10^123rd to 1, against.