Ancient Indian texts say one universe ends, and another is born. Is this what Big Bang was?

The Big Bang is believed to be the beginning of our universe 13.8 billion years ago. But some scientists believe that it didn't just start something, but it was also the end of another universe. Nobel laureate Roger Penrose proposed that ours isn't the first universe and also not the last. After he won the Nobel Prize in Physics 2020, Penrose stated that the Big Bang actually "began with something which was the remote future of a previous aeon". Which means, the Big Bang was actually the last stage of the life of another world. He calls this alternate theory Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (CCC). It basically means a cold end of one world is the hot start of another. He believes the afterglow of the Big Bang, or the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), comes from supermassive black holes from the previous universe that evaporated. His idea has been dismissed by other scientists who say the "hot spots" Penrose sees are just random statistical noise.

Hindu texts say there were many universes before ours

While there is no scientific proof for what Penrose proposes, this cycle has been mentioned in historic Indian texts. As Penrose's theory started floating on social media again, people pointed out that this exact belief has been enshrined in ancient Hindu texts for nearly 2,000 years. The Puranas, Vedas, Upanishads, and the Bhagavad Gita all talk about a cycle comprising Srishti (creation), Kalpa (a single cycle of the cosmos), and pralay (cosmic dissolution), or the end. The cycle starts with the creation of a new universe, which then stretches for around 4,320 million human years, and the cosmos ends with pralay, or destruction.

Also Read: What would Earth look like after it dies? Mysterious iron bar inside Ring Nebula could be our planet's fate

Penrose proposed this theory to solve the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which states that entropy, or disorder, always increases. Scientists say that this means that when the Big Bang happened, the universe should have been a chaotic place. However, observations show the early universe was actually highly ordered.

Penrose states that black holes are like entropy sinks that evaporate at the end of an aeon and reset the entropy. So everything starts from a blank slate in an extremely calm place. He based this theory on the so-called "hot spots" in the CMB. He believes these bright points are scars of supermassive black holes from the previous universe that evaporated. The burst of energy that survived the transition into our current aeon remained visible.