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Published online 4 May 2006 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news060501-8
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Cyclic universe could explain cosmic balancing act
Big bounces may make the Universe able to support stars and life.
A bouncing universe that expands and then shrinks every trillion years or so could explain one of the most puzzling problems in cosmology: how we can exist at all.
If this explanation, proposed in Science 1 by Paul Steinhardt at Princeton University, New Jersey, and Neil Turok at the University of Cambridge, UK, seems slightly preposterous, that can't really be held against it.
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