”Battle of the Big Bang” author Phil Halper reveals competing theories

2025-05-28

Battle of the Big Bang: The New Tales of Our Cosmic Origins examines the most profound idea: how did the universe begin? Watch the video, as it includes illustrations in the final 10 minutes. Although I'm not a physicist, I have read many books about the Big Bang, physics, and the universe. This book is an in-depth exploration of the competing models that hypothesize about our origins. I appreciated learning about the Ekpyrotic universe and Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (CCC), two novel ideas. For instance, CCC posits that "the ...

Battle of the Big Bang: The New Tales of Our Cosmic Origins examines the most profound idea: how did the universe begin?

Watch the video, as it includes illustrations in the final 10 minutes.

Although I'm not a physicist, I have read many books about the Big Bang, physics, and the universe.

This book is an in-depth exploration of the competing models that hypothesize about our origins.

I appreciated learning about the Ekpyrotic universe and Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (CCC), two novel ideas. For instance, CCC posits that "the universe is cyclic but never re-collapses. Each eon expands until all mass disappears."

"In the Ekpyrotic universe, the movement of the branes is controlled by a springlike force, operating in a higher dimension. What was being suggested was that this force is felt in our reality as dark energy."

I also appreciated that the book included several illustrations that were essential for grasping these counterintuitive topics.

One of the authors, Phil Halper, is a well-known YouTuber.

The other co-author is Niayesh Afshordi, a cosmologist.

I interviewed Phil Halper on my WanderLearn Show.

Watch the 30-second book trailer

If you're fascinated by the Big Bang, watch the video below, where I interview Phil Halper, one of the book's co-authors.

Here's the timeline:

00:00 Problems with the Big Bang
04:00 Before the Big Bang
06:20 Stephen Hawking's Strange Theory
09:30 Imaginary numbers and time
11:11 Natural Selection of Universes
19:30 Are we in a white hole?
23:40 Conformal Cyclic Cosmology CCC
25:00 Ekpyrotic theory
28:30 Carroll-Chen Model

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