Roger Penrose: Why The Big Bang Was Not The Beginning

Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal

Curt Jaimungal

Physics, Philosophy, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 606 Ratings

🗓️ 3 November 2025

⏱️ 113 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nobel laureate Sir Roger Penrose dismantles standard cosmology, arguing the Big Bang wasn't the beginning and quantum mechanics is fundamentally wrong. He then connects a real, gravitational wave function collapse to the non-computational nature of consciousness and why today's AI can't truly understand. Sponsors: - Get 50% off Claude Pro, including access to Claude Code, at https://claude.ai/theoriesofeverything - I personally subscribe to The Economist. TOE listeners get 35% off the annual subscription. No other podcast has this! https://economist.com/TOE Join My New Substack (Personal Writings): https://curtjaimungal.substack.com Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4gL14b92xAErofYQA7bU4e Timestamps: - 00:00 - The Big Bang Wasn't The Beginning - 02:14 - Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (CCC) - 09:12 - The Collapse Problem - 14:31 - A Feeling of Elation - 24:32 - Gödel and Understanding - 37:32 - Gravitational Collapse - 50:05 - Critique of Modern AI - 57:12 - Black Hole Information "Paradox" - 1:04:15 - Wheeler, Wigner, & Witten - 1:15:04 - Richard Feynman in Poland - 1:20:25 - Libet's Timing of Consciousness - 1:32:49 - Three Worlds, Three Mysteries - 1:44:14 - Why Quantum Mechanics Is Wrong Links mentioned: - Stuart Hameroff [TOE]: https://youtu.be/0_bQwdJir1o - Classical Theory [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/9409195 - Rebecca Goldstein [TOE]: https://youtu.be/VkL3BcKEB6Y - The Emperor’s New Mind [Book]: https://www.amazon.ca/Emperors-New-Mind-Concerning-Computers/dp/0192861980 - Fashion, Faith, and Fantasy in the New Physics of the Universe [Book]: https://www.amazon.ca/Fashion-Faith-Fantasy-Physics-Universe/dp/0691178534 - Perturbative Gauge Theory as a String Theory in Twistor Space [Paper]: https://arxiv.org/pdf/hep-th/0312171 - What Is Life? [Book]: https://www.amazon.ca/What-Life-Matter-Autobiographical-Sketches/dp/1107604664 - Michael Levin [TOE]: https://youtu.be/Exdz2HKP7u0 - Why I Don’t Buy the Simulation Hypothesis (Nor Materialism) [TOE]: https://youtu.be/3_lBPMc6JRY - Consciousness and Quantum Mechanics [Book]: https://www.amazon.ca/Consciousness-Quantum-Mechanics-Shan-Gao/dp/0197501664 - Ivette Fuentes [TOE]: https://youtu.be/cUj2TcZSlZc Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal features long-form, technically detailed interviews with leading researchers in physics, mathematics, consciousness, and philosophy, exploring topics at the level of active research. For academics, graduate students, and anyone seeking depth beyond popular science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	My idea is a crazy idea, and I admit it's a crazy idea.
0:03.4	But you need something crazy because the conventional ideas don't work.
0:08.2	And I think people just sort of go with the crowd.
0:11.1	I'm just not persuaded by going with the crowd.
0:13.5	It doesn't make sense.
0:14.6	I don't believe a word of it.
0:16.0	The Big Bang was not the beginning.
0:18.0	The same as quantum mechanics.
0:19.7	No, there's a huge thing missing. It's
0:22.0	extremely accurate. You could say it's incomplete. Schrodinger and Einstein were much more polite.
0:27.8	They said, well, quantum mechanics is incomplete. Swarther suggests, oh, there's a little detail. Oh,
0:33.3	change the sun in here. I don't mean that. It's a big thing that's missing.
0:46.3	Standard cosmology says the Big Bang was the beginning. Penrose says that's dead wrong. His conformal cyclic cosmology makes each Big Bang the conformal continuation of a previous
0:52.7	Eon's remote future. Why? Because mass becomes irrelevant.
0:58.1	Twice, in fact, for different reasons. At the Big Bang, there's extreme temperature, and in the remote
1:03.3	future, there's only massless photons and scaling of Dirac particles. No mass means no scale,
1:10.1	so conformal geometry. This lets the remote future
1:13.6	match a stretched-out big bang. And this explains why our origin is smooth while black
1:20.6	holes are tumultuous. Penrose argues inflation doesn't explain this, but his model does.
1:26.6	He further insists that quantum mechanics is wrong, not just incomplete.
1:31.5	On this channel, I interview researchers on theories of reality with rigor and depth, and I've
1:36.7	been blessed to speak to Roger Penrose four times.
	...

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