(urth) Science catches up to the New Sun

[David Stockhoff]

Some kind of cyclically expanding/contracting universe theory has been around for at least several decades, if not more. But this is cool to read about. 

It addresses something that has always bothered me when I read TBotNS:

That the various Hieros are rather vague on the concept of successive "universes." The word gets thrown around a lot, almost casually: you have stacked universes, sequential universes, and so on. How does one escape a universe when it implodes? Was Yesod always there, or was it created? 

But if a universe is never totally destroyed, then you can imagine whole species surviving from one to the next with some predictability. Without that predictability, Apheta's theory of generation and countergeneration can't possibly go on forever. Eventually, the chain will break if every universe ends in a great melodramatic catastrophe.

Perhaps one could simply categorize Briah as a universe subject to cyclical contractions (thus, multiple bodies and a single consciousness, like Severian), and Yesod subject to none (like the Increate). The manvantara model dug up by Witz resembles this.


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Message: 7
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2008 16:03:18 -0800
From: "Jordon Flato" <jordonflato at gmail.com>
Subject: (urth) Science catches up to the New Sun
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
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	<273409710812121603t299e1fa7ie7045e06c4a43bae at mail.gmail.com>
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I'm pretty sure this isn't the first time this theory has been bandied
about, but this sounds pretty much like the cosmology of the New Sun, except
it's been posited as reality:



Most cosmologists believe that our universe emerged from a singularity
during the Big Bang. But now physicists are exploring the possibility that
our universe was created by the death of an earlier universe.

 . . .

The researchers have found that when applying LQC, the universe does not
revert back to a singularity as it contracts. Instead of seeing a big bang,
the models indicate that the universe experienced a big bounce, with a
predecessor universe contracting as it ended and then reemerging as our new,
expanding universe. If the theory proves correct, it could mean that our
universe does not have a finite beginning and end but is, instead, part of a
chain of universes that expand and then contract to give way to a brand new
universe.
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