Are we Seeing Hawking Points in the Microwave Sky?

IAP weekly specialised seminars / Friday 22 November 2019: Roger Penrose (Mathematical Institute, University of Oxford, Oxford, Royaume-Uni). A dedicated analysis of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), as observed by both the WMAP and Planck satellites, has revealed numerous previously unobserved remarkably 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 the remote future of a previous cosmic “aeon”, where 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.