7:30 pm, Wednesday, April 10th, 2019

Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) - room 1250

2260 West Mall, UBC campus Are We Seeing Hawking Points in the Microwave Sky? Sir Roger Penrose University of Oxford A dedicated analysis of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), as revealed by both the WMAP and Planck satellites, has discovered numerous previously unobserved highly energetic anomalous 'spots' in the CMB. Such spots are implications of conformal cyclic cosmology (CCC), which proposes that our Big Bang was the (conformal) continuation of a previous cosmic "aeon", wherein these anomalous spots would be the result of the conformally compressed Hawking radiation from supermassive black holes in that previous aeon. It is very hard to see how such anomalous spots can be explained in terms of the conventional inflationary picture of our very early universe. To learn more please visit his webpage, or his Wikipedia entry. Download flyer Additional resources for this talk: Video.