Penrose hypothesises that in the (very) distant future all massive particles will have decayed, this includes all black hole sucumbing to Hawking radiation, which means a timescale measured in googols of years. The universe will be a sea of photons and gravitons which, as massless particles, don't "experience" the passage of time due to all their energy being expressed as a function of their frequency:pawiz wrote:Just watched it on yoo toob.
I have no clue what Penrose was on about.
I paraphrase Penrose: "Once the universe gets so big and is only made of photons, it will lose track of how big it is and big becomes the same as small, and so the cycle continues with another big bang."
What the fuck is that all about?
In this "timeless" universe all measurements of distance become meaningless and the universe essentially becomes an unstable chaotic system out of which emerges a new "aeon" (as Penrose calls each new expansion).This can arise because in the high energy phase of the next aeon during the initial Planck era all particles will have an energy that exceeds any limit set by the Higgs field (if it exists
) meaning that their energy content is also expressed as Penrose hypothesises that the end of one aeon transitions smoothly into the begining of the next thanks to this process.He details this using conformal diagrams (which, I have to admit, I'm still getting my head round) and calls his theory conformal cyclic cosmology. He explains it in reasonably understandable terms in his book Cycles of Time wot I just finished reading.
