Is Our Universe a One-Off Fluke, or an Endless Cycle?

If we throw out inflation theory, what other explanations do we have?

It’s possible that what we think of as the “bang” that started everything was really just another bounce—a transition from a preexisting phase of contraction into one of rapid expansion. With that idea, there’s a whole new domain of time, before the bounce, before the bang, with which you can introduce processes that would naturally smooth and flatten the universe. The contraction would be very gentle and slow compared to the very rapid inflationary expansion, but it would still go at a non-uniform rate. This would translate into fluctuations of temperature and density after the bounce consistent with the fluctuations we see in the cosmic microwave background. This leads to a picture of a cyclical universe. Could there have been a series of bounces in the past? It’s a natural possibility. With each bounce, there’s always going to be this smoothing, flattening process that ends up erasing information, or spreading out information so thinly from what preceded it, that there is almost no trace of it in the universe that you can directly find. The way you get around the problem of beginning is that there is no beginning. It was always there doing this, forever in the past and forever in the future.

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