Weird News

The universe revealed by observations is spectacularly simple: spatially flat, with nearly scale-invariant fluctuations. Nevertheless, there are major puzzles: what happened at the singularity? what are the dark energy and dark matter? where is the universe heading? Until LHC tells us otherwise, these conundra are the most important clues to new physics beyond the standard model. Inflationary cosmology is the most popular theory of the very early universe, but fails in important respects. The idea of a "Creation from Nothing" also seems problematic. A cyclical universe involving repeated big crunch/big bang transitions may be more attractive: I will explain recent progress in developing this scenario.