Physicists may have spotted remains of black holes from a 'previous' universe

Contrary to popular — and extremely long standing — belief, we are not living in the first and only universe, according to the results of a recent study. A group of researchers insist that they have identified remnants of black holes from another universe which existed before our own.There were other universes before our own, and they too were full of black holes, a paper published by Daniel An from the New York Maritime College, mathematical physicist Roger Penrose from the University of Oxford and theoretical physicist Krzysztof Meissner from the University of Warsaw, claims. And traces of those long-dead black holes can be detected in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) — the omnipresent faint radiation that is a remnant of our universe's violent birth.[caption id="attachment_4432867" align="alignnone" width="1280"]

Representational image.[/caption]The findings are an implication of conformal cyclic cosmology — an idea, first proposed by Penrose in 2010, that states that the universe is made up of a series of different universes which go through infinite cycles, such that even when a universe ends and a new one begins, the background radiation from decaying black holes of the previous universe remains in the next one. This theory uses data from what are known as 'Hawking points' to explain itself. Named after Stephen Hawking, Hawking points are regions in the universe where the scientists believe the residual radiation from now-extinct black holes still exists. Even the paper begins with the following words: "Dedicated to the memory of Stephen Hawking."The team created randomised maps of this cosmic microwave background radiation and tried to spot similar points. Since this random data didn’t replicate the phenomenon, so the authors of the paper believe that their theory is sound, and that the Hawking points are indeed the last remaining traces of long-dead black holes from previous universes.