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Comment by nsilvestri | Hacker News Reader

[citation needed]

I think the OP meant Cyclic Universe theory by Penrose: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=K_FUlo8BF9Y

Sounds more like an inspiration taken from Clarke's 2001, when Bowman travels through the Monolith to space Grand Central in inverted universe

In a thread about scientific questions so out-of-reach that we can barely put names to the yawning chasms in collective human understanding...

It might be unrealistic to expect any proffered answer to come with a reputable citation.

I'm sharing my own idea.

I think you rather badly misunderstand what physics is. It's not a field where you try to convince people of some kind of emotionally compelling origin story you just invented. It's a field where you measure a bunch of things, relate the numbers with some sort of equation, and (optionally!) describe the equation with some sort of layman-friendly metaphor, to build intuition. You can't skip straight to the metaphor! Where are your numbers? On what basis do you claim this radical departure from established physics? Why should we listen to you?

Although i completely agree with your point, one could also say that before equations and models, there's observation and intuition.

One could argue that metaphores are a step to move the science back toward reality and "complete the circle".

And I think you forgot we're just commenting an article on hacker news, not publishing to a physics journal :) By skipping to the metaphor I'm doing a small inception in your minds, you physicists out there. Now this idea will never leave you :)

I'm pretty sure most physicists are aware of the cyclic universe theory, it's just that there's very little evidence to support it.

And are we sure it doesn't predict cosmic strings just as much as the big bang model does? Both involve the universe being very hot and dense in the past and then getting rapidly cooler. That's the part that makes physicists expect cosmic strings, not the question of where the hot-dense state came from in the first place.

> emotionally compelling origin story you just invented

This doesn't seem to describe the previous comment. It's not just invented, and not emotionally compelling. It's just a fun idea.

> You can't skip straight to the metaphor! Where are your numbers?

I have a story about ants on a rubber sheet for you.

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