The far future of a Universe (in our current model) is exactly the same as its far past, with the exception that the far future of the Universe is much larger than the far past. So, to identify the end of one Universe with the beginning of another, we need to perform a conformal transformation, which you can think of as just multiplying the universe with a scaling factor that scales a large old universe to a small baby universe.
Most things do not survive these scalings. Matter will be completely trapped within the previous universe, and cannot propagate to the next universe. However, electromagnetism is famously conformal invariant, i.e. they do not care about conformal transformations. Thus, light from the previous universe can travel unharmed to the next universe. Gravity, in the form of Einstein’s General Relativity, does not enjoy conformal invariance, but gravitational waves do enjoy conformal invariance. As such, gravitational waves can also travel unharmed from a previous universe to our universe.
In the past universe, supermassive black holes can merge and produce copious amounts of gravitational waves, which can then travel to our current universe. This bunch of energy results in an “explosion” in the beginning of our universe, which creates signal in the CMB that looks like concentric rings.
These are the rings that Penrose and co claimed that they have found, but again,
So is this something like saying our universe is contained within other way universes, a bit like Russian dolls? And an infinite number if if universes will one-day be contained within ours?
Of course the answer to this question depends on what you mathematically mean by “contain”. In my view, this is more like the past universes evolving into instead of containing the newer universes.
Isn’t the same true for any metaphysical position you take? Why is it this way instead of another?
Why does God instantiate the abstract realm in the way he does, instead of another? Why does he instantiate it instead of not? If God is the source of the qualitative contents of conscious experience, of our seeing and experiencing the color red the way we do, why does it do it that way instead of another? Why not green, or some color we can’t even imagine?
Positing God as an “answer” to any metaphysical or scientific problem seems to amount to nothing more than uttering or typing the sentence “God is it’s source”.
And when it comes to immaterial infinite minds, we can invoke them everywhere and at any time there’s something we don’t understand and is proving difficult to work out.
How does it work? Dunno man, God did it. Penrose was being too mild. The idea is not just too vague, it’s completely vacuous. It explains things only by fiat, in an ad-hoc way. There’s no actual explanation going on. God made it, or God is it’s source, or it derives from God, etc. These are all just declarations that don’t seem to actually explain anything. Band-aid answers to offer up to satisfy our desire to have “answers” to deep questions.
A makes it so that B, is not an explanation, when what we are looking for is an understanding of the “makes it so that”-part.
Saying God “is the source of” the mental, physical, and abstract realms is no more an explanation than saying magical hats are. Magical hats are the source of the mental, physical, and abstract realms! Because magical hats are metaphysically necessary.
The abstract realm (if it exists) probably exists necessarily in a way that is dependent on God (I.e. universals exist because God is able to bring things into being that instantiate those universals, and because he knows those possibilities).
As for anything contingent, we can give an answer to the “why” question (God chose to do it in order to bring about some good, consistent with his nature), and it is arguable that we do not need an answer to the “rather than not” question in every situation.
Alexander Pruss’ work on the PSR and his paper on Divine Creative Freedom are both good resources where your objection here is met. And this link also has decent exploration of the “God isn’t a valid explanation” objection.
Except a hat, magical or not, is still a hat, which is a material object, which is not the kind of thing which can be metaphysically necessary.