In conformal cyclic cosmology, there are no big bangs.

Once everything in the old universe has been reduced to photons, and all the black holes have evaporated, the universe loses its sense of scale, and resumes operation as a universe the size of a grapefruit (or the size of the earth - I don't think it matters).

I don't know how Penfold thinks this resizing is supposed to happen, for example whether it's instantaneous or a slow process.

I'd love to have a few beers with Penfold; a lot of what he thinks about isn't maths or cosmology, and isn't all fit for publication, but I imagine it must be very interesting.

I condensed my post for brevity, there's no exact defined boundary between aeons or how that transition exactly occurs.

One could arguably say it's when there are no fermions from the previous one anymore, but that can be contested.

Could it be we create and always have the big bang by blowing shit up in a particle accelerator, and that is the great filter not just for us, but the rest of the universe since it just starts over?