oscillating universe

"He took the possibility of an oscillating universe quite seriously," one biography of Tolman said.

That's the basic premise behind the cyclic or oscillating universe theory, which actually dates back to the 1930s.

As the Big Bang became accepted scientific theory, the oscillating universe theory faded away.

It would be pretty hard to test oscillating universe theory, as no information would likely survive cycling through a Big Bang or a Big Crunch, though mathematical physicist Roger Penrose has argued that black holes from previous universes may have survived the transition.

Philosopher Ian Hacking was the first to connect the inverse gambler’s fallacy to arguments for the multiverse, focusing on physicist John Wheeler’s oscillating universe theory, which held that our universe is the latest of a long temporal sequence of universes.