[Kenny Bunkport]

Using a theory called "loop quantum gravity," a group led by Penn State professor Abhay Ashtekar has shown that just before the Big Bang occurred, another universe very similar to ours may have been contracting.

Where did that universe come from?

[SauronOfMordor]

Where did that universe come from?

I was asked that question in High School theology class years ago. My smart-ass answer was "the same place God came from"

A cyclical universe would have no beginning nor end, just big-banging, expanding, contracting, and big-banging again

[Larry Lucido]

Where did that universe come from?

The old universe junkyard?

[The_Reader_David]

This is a sophisticated attempt to revive the old pagan notion of an eternally existing material universe.

Since the observable universe shows every evidence of having a beginning (no surprise to monotheists of any of the strains derived from the ancient Near East, but a great discomfort to atheistic materialists), the eternally existing material world must simply be unobservable, and partitioned into 'other universes' by states dense enough that the physics we can experimentally verify breaks down.

Notice that in doing this, the materialist abandons any rightful claim to being more scientific than the theist, since by definition 'another universe' is as unobservable as an initial divine fiat. Theism gains the advantage, though on the basis of Occam's Razor: one transcendant God is fewer unobservable entities than the infinity of 'other universes' this theory needs.

Personally, I quite like Hawking's null-initial condition proposal: there is *nothing* before the beginning, not even a 'before'. It's a nice mathematical model for a universe created ex nihilo, even getting the nihil right.