Photo: Before Big Bang: Light Shed on "Previous Universe"

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An image illustrates the principle of "cosmic forgetfulness"—our inability to know much about the purported universe previous to our own.

In the image, time proceeds from left to right. So a universe with low "quantum fuzziness" contracts in volume, goes through a "big bounce" (the low point on the graph), then forms a universe with a great deal of "quantum fuzziness."

Image courtesy Martin Bojowald, Penn State

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