735S_tx 3/11/10 09:25 Page 6

Cycles of Time

previous collapsing phase which “bounced” to become our Big Bang.

And there are other theories where little bits of a previous phase of the
universe collapsed into things we call black holes, and these bits
“bounced”, to become the seeds of lots and lots of new expanding
universes, and there are others where new universes sprang out of things
called “false vacuums”. . .’
‘That all sounds pretty crazy to me,’ Tom said.
‘And, oh yes, there’s another theory that I heard about recently . . .’