The universe keeps dying and being reborn, claims Nobel Prize winner

Sir Roger Penrose, a Nobel Prize-winning mathematician and physicist from the University of Oxford, has put forth a bold theory that our universe has gone through several Big Bangs and will experience another one in the future. Penrose received the Nobel Prize in Physics for his groundbreaking work in developing mathematical methods that extended Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, as well as for his research on black holes, which revealed how objects that become too dense undergo gravitational collapse into singularities.

Penrose has dubbed his theory "conformal cyclic cosmology" (CCC) and believes that the cosmos will continue to expand until all matter decays, leading to a second Big Bang that will create a new universe. In an interview with The Telegraph, he stated, "The Big Bang was not the beginning. There was something before the Big Bang and that something is what we will have in our future."

Penrose's theory is based on his identification of six "Hawking Points," each approximately eight times the size of the Moon, which he believes are the remnants of "dead" black holes from previous universes. He claims that these points provide evidence that supports the theory of evaporating black holes put forth by his former colleague, Stephen Hawking.

Penrose's research on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) has also led him to propose that the anomalous circular regions found in the CMB, which have elevated temperatures, are the result of evaporating black holes. He has also suggested that the uniform temperature rings in the CMB were produced by gravitational wave fingerprints from merging black holes in a universe before ours, providing further support for cyclic cosmology.

However, Penrose's theory has drawn criticism from some cosmologists who argue that it is difficult to reconcile the idea of an endlessly large cosmos in one aeon with a super-small one in the next. Nonetheless, his research continues to push the boundaries of our understanding of the universe, and his ideas on the quantum-level origins of our awareness offer yet another fascinating theory to explore.