The phenomenon and the explanation

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I'm gonna get above my pay grade here, but do they really have scale? What are you using to measure them? I realize that some things are scale invariant, and so they'll survive the transition from one aeon to the next. I believe that gravitational waves fall into that category, they're scale invariant.

They're waves, they radiate out from their source and decrease in amplitude and increase in wavelength as they go. In what sense could such waves be scale-invariant? Think of analogous waves on a lake when you drop a rock in - they look very different at different scales.

"Sequential" is a problem when you realize what I meant by "stacking". And yes, I was being intentionally vague.

That doesn't help.

But what if we try to put MWI and CCC together. What do we get? Well it depends on how you put them together. I want to stack them. Now when I say "stack", what I really mean is, I want to take the aeons from CCC and put them in superposition to give me MWI.

Consider for example Schrodinger's cat, CCC should produce an infinite number of aeons that are identical to the one in which Schrodinger's cat sits blissfully unaware of its potential fate. Of that infinite number, some of them will be identical only up to the point where we open the box and discover the fate of the cat, then they'll diverge. So this explains the decoherence that MWI theorizes, as opposed to the collapse that other theories propose. It also explains where those other worlds come from. They're simply the result of a perpetual cycle produced by the neverending increase in entropy...CCC.

That makes no sense to me - you can't just mush two completely different theories about different things together like that.

Decoherence is not an alternative to wavefunction collapse, it follows from a superposition interacting with the environment. Wavefunction collapse is in addition to decoherence in collapse interpretations.

In MWI, Schrodinger's cat is not in a superposition until we open the box; the detector is a macroscopic object that records the quantum event, so decoherence and branching starts in the environment inside the box as soon as the emitted particle is detected, and spreads rapidly to encompass the detector, the poison vial, the cat, and the box, and from there to the outside environment. Versions of the cat and you will be in each branch of the wavefunction (particle emitted/particle not emitted) long before you open the box. You just don't know which branch you're in until you open it - this is 'self-locating uncertainty'.

Now the problem with a sequentially ordered series of aeons is, I can see no logical reason why I should stack them. They have a definite order. This one comes before that one. However, if can't tell which order they should go in, then I have no logical reason to put one before or after another, therefore I can logically treat them as if they occur simultaneously. In other words, I can treat them as if they're in a superposition.

Except that indistinguishable or not, the theory requires that each follows the previous in temporal order. Also, if entropy always increases, then they will be ordered entropically.

 

[sjastro]

But doesn't the BH information paradox entail the puzzle that thermal radiation has a characteristically random distribution, i.e. there is no information in thermal radiation beyond that it's a thermal distribution?

ISTR some attempts to suggest that quantum entanglement was a potential answer, but no details.

You are correct in a classical model thermal radiation is random but in this case it is about quantum information which involves entanglement between the black hole and the radiated particles and results in entanglement entropy.

This video shows how quantum entanglement creates entropy.

The role of entanglement entropy in Hawking radiation for reasons that are not understood seems to have resolved the black hole information paradox.

The Black Hole Information Paradox Comes to an End

 

[SelfSim]

If I accept your previous paragraph, then the 'we' you mention here must also be a product of my own mind, so there is no common mind type or in-common meaning, "What we have is a conscious mind exploring itself .. nothing more".

Then how could you possibly understand what you're accepting there, or anything that is written on this board? Magic or something?
The term 'we' carries a meaning that human minds generally understand .. that's also easily testable. Maybe you learned that meaning by way of it being passed onto you by your parents when you were very young? If so, then there's evidence for your inheriting a similar human mind-type as theirs otherwise, there'd be no reason for assuming your evidenced understanding of that term(?)

We all conceive models of other minds similar to, yet varying slightly, from our own. Not only is that blatantly obvious, its also blatantly, objectively evidenced.
I'm not just making this stuff up .. there's tonnes of objective evidence behind it and none to the contrary, but you have to actually look at it.

To argue that all we have is "a conscious mind exploring itself", is tantamount to denying the existence of different instances of human minds perceiving things differently...

No .. Why? The variations amongst similar, yet generally common minds of type = human, is heavily evidenced. To deny it, is tantamount to denying that evidence.
Also, If you think I'm mounting an 'argument', then you must accept that different minds conceptualise differently too, come to think of it .. otherwise what other possible meaning would you hold for an 'argument'?

IOW accepting the existence of different instances of human minds perceiving things differently is accepting an external reality.

Nope .. eg: each complete pattern of blood vessels in the human retina is unique, but they're still human. There's no evidence for some 'external' reality there (where what I mean by 'external' is existing truly independently from any human mind. I have no problem with us holding a slightly different meaning for our model of 'external reality' in order to distinguish imagined/untestable/believed realities, by the way .. I suspect that may be where you're coming from here(?) .. but I'm not so convinced that others in this thread are in synch with that a meaning, though?)

 

[sjastro]

Awesome stuff.

It's been puzzling me for some time now that after the universe loses its mass, it somehow goes from massive, empty, and cold, to tiny, dense, and hot. How in the heck does it do that? I'm not buying Penrose's magical re-scaling trick. Neither do I think that the loss of clocks is all that important. It definitely makes it difficult to measure things, but it doesn't actually cause anything to change.

If you don’t buy into Penrose’s magical rescaling trick then you can’t accept CCC which I was under the impression from your previous posts you are in favour of.
The loss of clocks is important because the theory is based on conformal geometry.
Conformal geometry applies 2,3……. N spatial dimensions where angles are invariant and time is not a spatial dimension.
If you included time, in other words space-time, angles are not preserved in space-time and vary relative to the motion of the observer.

Now if Penrose is right and his aeons are connected, then we lose our clocks in the distant future of one aeon, and we don't get them back until after the inflationary period of the next aeon, depending upon where you choose to draw the line between one aeon and the next. So you can put the inflationary period in whichever aeon you want to, but the question remains, in this clockless interval between aeons how does the universe go from empty and cold, to dense and hot?

You need to be careful about using the term inflation.
CCC replaces inflation which occurred for a very short time just after the ‘conventional’ Big Bang at t=0.
Between this event at t=0 and the distant future, the universe undergoes accelerated expansion rather than inflation.
For some of this period CCC behaves like BB cosmology except entropy after reaching some maximum state must eventually become zero.
The other issue is how the universe transitions from the end of an aeon which is barely above absolute zero to an ultra hot state at the start of the next aeon.
Ironically it is the same type of problem that confronts BB cosmology at t=0.

You have to keep in mind that you haven't just lost your clocks, somehow you've lost all your fundamental forces too. So there's a huge difference between the end of one aeon and the start of the next. However, invoking a massive number of years for this to happen, doesn't mean that it didn't happen. The time that it takes is irrelevant.

You don't lose your fundamental forces for lost clocks.
In fact the force laws depend on the dimensionality of space.
f = k/rⁿ⁻¹ where f is the gravitational or electrostatic force, k is the proportionality constant and n is the dimension of space.
In our 3 dimensional world the inverse square law applies.

Astrophysics tells us that red dwarfs are the most common type of star and can exist for trillions of years.
That alone tells you time is very relevant to go to a state where the universe is devoid of matter according to CCC.

I would imagine, that one thing this loss of clocks does though, is make it very difficult to tell if your universe is expanding or contracting. Penrose gets the universe to contract by simply re-scaling it, but I would suspect that it actually does contract, it's not just a mathematical trick. Why it contracts though, I have no idea. I simply don't have enough information. I don't know what dark matter is. I don't know why the expansion of the universe is accelerating. And I don't know what's gonna happen 66,000 yottayears from now. However, if the universe really does contract then you're gonna lose all those gravitational waves.

Contraction doesn’t occur in CCC as each aeon is further expansion over its previous aeon.
Contraction if it did occur would affect gravitational waves like light; the frequencies would increase as a result of cosmological blue shift opposite to expansion which results in cosmological redshift.

So I think that Penrose is glossing over a whole lot of stuff with his re-scaling, but that being said, here's what I like about CCC. I like it's fundamental simplicity. You begin with one simple premise, entropy always increases.

As explained the problem with CCC is that entropy does not always increase.

But this leads to some really Nutjob 101 ideas. I don't think that entropy can be infinite, no matter how one defines it. Therefore it would seem as if entropy can't always increase. So the premise doesn't hold up. Unless... entropy is conserved, and an increase of entropy in one area leads to a loss of entropy in another. In other words, our universe and its entropy is part of a set of conjugate variables, and entropy oscillates back and forth between them.

Entropy can have a maximum value but can never be infinite or exceed the number of particles in the universe.
Our observable universe contains a finite number of particles, a very large number but not infinite.
Furthermore due to the particle horizon our observable universe is like an isolated system where the second law of thermodynamics tells us entropy will always increase.
The aeons are also are subject to particle horizons and will also behave like an isolated system.

 

[SelfSim]

The aeons are also are subject to particle horizons and will also behave like an isolated system.

Therefore, where any observer is bounded by their own particle horizon, there can only be one 'aeon'. The idea of multiple 'aeons', only raises questions of what isolates the system in which such a concept is envisaged? Its the same issue confronting the 'God' concept .. no different. I can now see what Siegel's 'negativity' criticism comes from.

 

[sjastro]

Therefore, where any observer is bounded by their own particle horizon, there can only be one 'aeon'. The idea of multiple 'aeons', only raises questions of what isolates the system in which such a concept is envisaged? Its the same issue confronting the 'God' concept .. no different. I can now see what Siegel's 'negativity' criticism comes from.

Aeons like mainstream theory rely on a cosmological constant where the universe undergoes accelerated
expansion and are therefore also subject to particle horizons.
It does raise the issue of how photons or gravitational waves from a previous aeon have crossed over into the present aeon and affected the CMB.

I'm relieved I'm not the only one confused by this theory.

The basic point (of CCC) is this. The very early universe is smooth. The universe right now is lumpy, with stars and galaxies and black holes all over the place. But the future universe will be smooth again — black holes will evaporate and the cosmological constant will disperse all the matter, leaving us nothing but empty space. (Just wait about 10^100 years.) So, Penrose says, we can map the late universe onto a future phase that looks just like our early universe, simply by a conformal transformation (a change of scale). Do this an infinite number of times, and you have a cyclic cosmology — the universe goes through a series of “aeons” that start with a smooth Big Bang, get lumpy as structure forms, smooth out again, and then gets matched onto another smooth Big-Bang-like phase, etc.

If you’re sketchy on that last bit, join the club. Sure, mathematically we can map the smooth late universe onto the smooth early universe. But what physical process would actually cause that to happen? Despite having the book in my hands, I’m still unclear on this. (I absolutely confess that the answer might be in there, but I simply haven’t read it carefully enough.) While the early and late universes are both smooth, they are very different in other obvious ways, such as the energy density. What causes the low-density late universe to come alive into something like the high-density early universe?

Penrose’s Cyclic Cosmology – Sean Carroll

 

[Eloy Craft]

But why do we need to throw God in there?

Why don't we just accept that change/decay/entropy are a natural part of existence. To me you're simply arguing for an explanation that we don't need.

We don't accept it because it's not a natural part of our existence. If it were I doubt it would pose a problem to our existence as it does. We wouldn't need to discuss it.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

You are correct in a classical model thermal radiation is random but in this case it is about quantum information which involves entanglement between the black hole and the radiated particles and results in entanglement entropy.

This video shows how quantum entanglement creates entropy.

The role of entanglement entropy in Hawking radiation for reasons that are not understood seems to have resolved the black hole information paradox.

The Black Hole Information Paradox Comes to an End

Ah, thanks for that link - it rather explains why I couldn't remember the details - I had come across all the elements, AdS/CFT, holographic principle, entanglement entropy, etc., but not the quantum extremal surface as part of the BH information lifecycle. It looks like another of those things that work out in the maths, but have no readily visualisable analogues...

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Then how could you possibly understand what you're accepting there, or anything that is written on this board? Magic or something?
The term 'we' carries a meaning that human minds generally understand .. that's also easily testable. Maybe you learned that meaning by way of it being passed onto you by your parents when you were very young? If so, then there's evidence for your inheriting a similar human mind-type as theirs otherwise, there'd be no reason for assuming your evidenced understanding of that term(?)

I see where you're coming from, but I'm just pointing out that the way you express it can be confusing - if "What we have is a conscious mind exploring itself .. nothing more" is taken literally, it implies solipsism.

No .. Why?

Because if "What we have is a conscious mind exploring itself .. nothing more" then those other minds are simply constructs of the conscious mind, discovered as it explores itself; i.e. if there is nothing more, then there is no external reality, just a conscious mind and its contents.

Nope .. eg: each complete pattern of blood vessels in the human retina is unique, but they're still human. There's no evidence for some 'external' reality there (where what I mean by 'external' is existing truly independently from any human mind. I have no problem with us holding a slightly different meaning for our model of 'external reality' in order to distinguish imagined/untestable/believed realities, by the way .. I suspect that may be where you're coming from here(?) .. but I'm not so convinced that others in this thread are in synch with that a meaning, though?)

I see no more evidence for other minds than for external reality. ISTM that if we are not talking solipsism, other minds must be external and real.

 

[partinobodycular]

We don't accept it because it's not a natural part of our existence.

So, is it our nature to be eternal, or is it our nature to change?

 

[SelfSim]

I see where you're coming from, but I'm just pointing out that the way you express it can be confusing - if "What we have is a conscious mind exploring itself .. nothing more" is taken literally, it implies solipsism.

Fair enough .. just a misread which I've already qualified. The 'nothing' in what I said there there, was not intended as a logical necessity. 'Nothing' in science, especially in theoretical physics/cosmology, is often a conceptual, testable model and not some logical imperative. 'A mind' is also a testable model.

What is bogus about solipsism, is that it always requires the claim that one's model of one's own mind is somehow different, distinct, or not even a conceptual model at all, compared with one's model of other people's minds. This also appears as being the 'default' inference drawn by those with an overly heavy reliance on philosophical musings .. (as distinct from those thinking scientifically).

Because if "What we have is a conscious mind exploring itself .. nothing more" then those other minds are simply constructs of the conscious mind, discovered as it explores itself; i.e. if there is nothing more, then there is no external reality, just a conscious mind and its contents.

One's own mind is demonstrably a conceptual model .. just like other people's minds are .. they're just different models, that's all.

I see no more evidence for other minds than for external reality. ISTM that if we are not talking solipsism, other minds must be external and real.

Thus far, there are no objective tests which would lead to conclusions of a mind independent reality. The notion of a mind independent reality is therefore just a belief .. (as we've gone over many, many times in the past).

 

[partinobodycular]

If you don’t buy into Penrose’s magical rescaling trick then you can’t accept CCC which I was under the impression from your previous posts you are in favour of.

When I say that I don't buy Penrose's rescaling trick, I mean that I want a specific mechanism that gets the universe from cold and empty to hot and dense. If I imagine myself in that cold empty universe I don't see anything that would account for an increase in heat. So where's it coming from?

The loss of clocks is important because the theory is based on conformal geometry.
Conformal geometry applies 2,3……. N spatial dimensions where angles are invariant and time is not a spatial dimension.
If you included time, in other words space-time, angles are not preserved in space-time and vary relative to the motion of the observer.

I'm a bit unclear here. Is Penrose equating the loss of clocks with the loss of time itself, and consequently with the loss of space?

If this is correct, then with the loss of mass, space/time would seemingly collapse to a point, and anything possessing spatial dimensions, such as gravitational waves wouldn't survive.

The other issue is how the universe transitions from the end of an aeon which is barely above absolute zero to an ultra hot state at the start of the next aeon.
Ironically it is the same type of problem that confronts BB cosmology at t=0.

That's exactly my question when it comes to Penrose's rescaling. How is rescaling making the universe hot?

Unless rescaling isn't simply a mathematical trick, and the loss of time also means the loss of space. In which case everything in the universe loses its discreteness. All the energy gets compressed into one single point.

So I've been looking for a specific mechanism that makes the universe go from cold and empty to hot and dense, thinking that Penrose's rescaling is just a mathematical trick. But maybe it's not. Maybe at some future point the universe actually does collapse into a singularity.

I say this, not particularly thinking that it's right, but rather because I'm interested in knowing why you think that it's wrong.

 

[partinobodycular]

Decoherence is not an alternative to wavefunction collapse, it follows from a superposition interacting with the environment. Wavefunction collapse is in addition to decoherence in collapse interpretations.

I'm going to assume that we're interpreting these terms differently. When I say that the wave function collapses, I mean that upon measurement, the wave function collapses into one distinct reality. When I say that the wave function decoheres, I mean that upon measurement, the wave function splits into two distinct realities.

In MWI, Schrodinger's cat is not in a superposition until we open the box; the detector is a macroscopic object that records the quantum event, so decoherence and branching starts in the environment inside the box as soon as the emitted particle is detected, and spreads rapidly to encompass the detector, the poison vial, the cat, and the box, and from there to the outside environment. Versions of the cat and you will be in each branch of the wavefunction (particle emitted/particle not emitted) long before you open the box. You just don't know which branch you're in until you open it - this is 'self-locating uncertainty'.

Trust me, I know this. I've watched "Something Deeply Hidden" many times. If I gave you the impression that I thought otherwise then that's on me. But I do have at least a vague understanding of the nuances involved.

Except that indistinguishable or not, the theory requires that each follows the previous in temporal order. Also, if entropy always increases, then they will be ordered entropically.

I've got that, but I'm going to question it. I would contend that if you collapse each aeon to a singularity then you're going to lose both the temporal order and the entropy.

Now I may very well be completely wrong. But I would be quite interested in knowing why.

 

[SelfSim]

I'm a bit unclear here. Is Penrose equating the loss of clocks with the loss of time itself, and consequently with the loss of space?

Time is what we perceive by observing what a clock displays. When there's a loss of clocks, there's no objective meaning of time.
IOW time is not some 'thing' which exists independently from our ability to measure it, in science.

Also, its almost not possible for humans to make any sense of our perceptions where time is excluded.

If this is correct, then with the loss of mass, space/time would seemingly collapse to a point, and anything possessing spatial dimensions, such as gravitational waves wouldn't survive.

Where time is removed as a dimension I don't think any of those things you mention there make sense physically anyway .. including any logical inferences drawn about a physical universe.

Unless rescaling isn't simply a mathematical trick, and the loss of time also means the loss of space. In which case everything in the universe loses its discreteness. All the energy gets compressed into one single point.

There would be no physical significance of a point, without introducing time into that scenario.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I'm going to assume that we're interpreting these terms differently. When I say that the wave function collapses, I mean that upon measurement, the wave function collapses into one distinct reality. When I say that the wave function decoheres, I mean that upon measurement, the wave function splits into two distinct realities.

Wavefunction collapse is indeed wavefunction collapse (although it doesn't happen in the MWI), but decoherence is not the same as wavefunction branching. Decoherence leads to branching by entangling the wavefunction with the environment so that interference is no longer possible.

Trust me, I know this. I've watched "Something Deeply Hidden" many times. If I gave you the impression that I thought otherwise then that's on me. But I do have at least a vague understanding of the nuances involved.

Well, you did specifically say, "some of them will be identical only up to the point where we open the box and discover the fate of the cat, then they'll diverge. So this explains the decoherence that MWI theorizes, as opposed to the collapse that other theories propose." which is astray on two counts - nothing diverges when we open the box and discover the fate of the cat (the divergence has already occurred), and decoherence is not an alternative to wavefunction collapse. Decoherence occurs when interference between wavefunctions is no longer possible, usually due to entanglement with the environment. Wavefunction collapse is said to occur (in collapse interpretations) when an observation is made and a single outcome observed ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I would contend that if you collapse each aeon to a singularity then you're going to lose both the temporal order and the entropy.

That may be true, but that's not CCC as I've heard it described (I was going to say 'understand it', but I don't!). My 'understanding' is that there is no collapse, only expansion on a larger scale, i.e. the final scale of the old aeon is the initial scale of the next... I may have it wrong, it's been a while since I read about it.

 

[sjastro]

When I say that I don't buy Penrose's rescaling trick, I mean that I want a specific mechanism that gets the universe from cold and empty to hot and dense. If I imagine myself in that cold empty universe I don't see anything that would account for an increase in heat. So where's it coming from?

That’s the whole point there doesn't appear to be a physical explanation.
As I mentioned in my first post on the subject CCC is basically a mathematical universe model that doesn’t translate well into a physical universe model.
I thought I might have missed something but others such a Sean Carroll have expressed the same concerns.

I'm a bit unclear here. Is Penrose equating the loss of clocks with the loss of time itself, and consequently with the loss of space?

If this is correct, then with the loss of mass, space/time would seemingly collapse to a point, and anything possessing spatial dimensions, such as gravitational waves wouldn't survive.

Space does not disappear in a spacelike region.
Our universe sits in the region of top cone (the universe’s future) and the bottom cone (the universe’s past).
This is the timelike region where causality is preserved.
Where the cones touch is the present.

The sides of the cone represent the boundary which separates timelike from spacelike regions and is where objects such as photons and gravitational waves travel at the speed of light.
Outside the cone is spacelike where events are separated spatially but not temporally, and for all intents and purposes there is no time.
Space however still exists, a photon or gravitational wave doesn’t keep time but it still travels through space.
If mass existed in this spacelike region then it must be travelling faster than the speed of light in order for there to be no temporal separation which defines the spacelike region.

In the CCC model this conundrum is removed as the spacelike regions only exist when the universe is either very young or very old when matter did not exist and only photons and gravitational waves can travel through the spacelike regions which separate the aeons.

That's exactly my question when it comes to Penrose's rescaling. How is rescaling making the universe hot?

Unless rescaling isn't simply a mathematical trick, and the loss of time also means the loss of space. In which case everything in the universe loses its discreteness. All the energy gets compressed into one single point.

So I've been looking for a specific mechanism that makes the universe go from cold and empty to hot and dense, thinking that Penrose's rescaling is just a mathematical trick. But maybe it's not. Maybe at some future point the universe actually does collapse into a singularity.

I say this, not particularly thinking that it's right, but rather because I'm interested in knowing why you think that it's wrong.

Since space doesn’t disappear with time, Penrose has modeled the spacelike regions as 3D space using conformal geometry.
The only advantage of the CCC model over the BB model is singularities do not exist and a pre BB time line is defined through the mathematical modelling of conformal mapping.

Let me reiterate my concerns about this model is not only the lack of physical interpretations but it also appears to violate the second law of thermodynamics as entropy does not decrease in an isolated system.
Penrose’s attempts of getting around this by claiming entropy or information disappears in black holes is not supported.

 

[partinobodycular]

Well, you did specifically say, "some of them will be identical only up to the point where we open the box and discover the fate of the cat, then they'll diverge. So this explains the decoherence that MWI theorizes, as opposed to the collapse that other theories propose."

Yup, I did say that. Sometimes I use a vernacular that I know is technically inaccurate, but that I also know pretty much everyone will be familiar with. Like I said, that's on me.

That may be true, but that's not CCC as I've heard it described (I was going to say 'understand it', but I don't!). My 'understanding' is that there is no collapse, only expansion on a larger scale, i.e. the final scale of the old aeon is the initial scale of the next...

You're understanding of CCC is pretty much just like mine as far as I can tell, only better. That said, it may seem as though I'm just cavalierly throwing away some fundamental aspects of it, but I'm trying to fill in what seems like a pretty significant gap. One which I don't understand. Specifically how you get from a cold empty universe to a dense hot one. Penrose seems to dismiss that gap, but to me there has to be something in between those two points.

I could hazard a guess, but that would be moving into Nutjob 102.

 

[Eloy Craft]

So, is it our nature to be eternal, or is it our nature to change?

It's natural for us to change from perfection to perfection. To be lifted to a higher state.
It's not natural for our earthly lives to end in death.

 

[SelfSim]

The Black Hole Information Paradox Comes to an End

Goodness me! What circuituos story there! Great stuff! I wasn't aware the topic had advanced that far.
This quote blew me away, namely because of its profound implications for physics.
I notice the string theorists were also leading the pack initially .. with no need to commit to string theory, what's more!

All this reinforces many physicists’ hunch that space-time is not the root level of nature, but instead emerges from some underlying mechanism that is not spatial or temporal. To many, that was the main lesson of the AdS/CFT duality. The new calculations say much the same thing, but without committing to the duality or to string theory. Wormholes crop up because they are the only language the path integral can use to convey that space is breaking down. They are geometry’s way of saying the universe is ultimately nongeometric.

What does that even mean: 'nongeometric'? Phew!

PS: Thanks so much for that link .. its a corker!

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

... I'm trying to fill in what seems like a pretty significant gap. One which I don't understand. Specifically how you get from a cold empty universe to a dense hot one. Penrose seems to dismiss that gap, but to me there has to be something in between those two points.

I think Penrose's point is that when scale goes out the window, a the end of one aeon, very smooth and in (or approaching) thermal equilibrium 'looks' just like a 'seed' universe about to inflate. I suspect what he sees is in the maths, not easily visualizable... but while it may work at cosmological scales, AFAICS, the particles and physical parameters of physics are not scale-independent, so it seems to me that the gravitational and quantum behaviour that a big bang requires would not be available at the start of a new CCC aeon... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯