# No true beginning and infinite regression

> - I asked whether the universe could have no true beginning, with a black hole core that keeps feeding the expansion.
> - Grok said parts echo real models like Penrose's cyclic cosmology and black hole universes, but observations push back.

By Emin Mahrt. Published 2025-12-08. Updated 2025-12-08.
Canonical: https://emin.de/posts/no-true-beginning-and-infinite-regression
First published: https://emino.app/posts/no-true-beginning-and-infinite-regression/ (2025-12-08)
Category: science. Format: essay. Language: en.
Provenance: mixed. AI-assisted: true. Reviewed by a human: false.

![](https://emin.de/media/no-true-beginning-and-infinite-regression/cover.jpg)

## My question about the beginning

I have a question about the beginning of the universe. If we look at the universe as some sort like the Big Bang, and I don't say it's a dot, but it's actually something like a square, and when you look at it also from the directive of pi, which is basically an infinite number, then we could say that because it's an infinite number, you can indefinitely go closer and closer to the, let's say, to one point of the circle, but you can actually never reach it because we never know the infinite exact pi. And when we think about this, and I'm thinking about the Big Bang or like the start of the universe, and we could say that there was no start because you can just in infinite time go closer and closer, and you could basically, and at the beginning, you know, you could even think about that more, that all the matter of the universe was more and more compressed.

So basically, we talk about the beginning of the universe as no matter how much you go back to the beginning, you never actually reach the point of beginning, and that because the universe expands on a constant base, that the core of the universe is actually something like a black hole that constantly emits radiation. This radiation basically becomes the expanding universe, and because there is no, like because pi is an infinite number, you can basically infinite long go more in a more dense black hole, but also in the other direction that the, through, because the black hole is not a still and death thing, it's continually expanding.

And now I think that that maybe, like in many things, the, what the, what a black hole that we know, what we see, not the beginning of the universe, but the other black holes that we see, that they are a combination of like where everything ends up in the event horizon, that they, because they basically, they suck everything in, and then they re-emit it through radiation until they disappear again. So exactly that same thing basically could be the beginning of the universe, and it's a, it's like a, it's like a, it's like a circle.

I hope you understand all these things. Maybe there are different, different and similar approaches. I don't know if everybody, anybody put this together like I did, and would like to have your honest opinion on this.

**Basically,** What if the universe has no true start, like pi, and a black hole at its core feeds the expansion?

## How Grok read the idea

I asked Grok. This is its answer.

Your idea is a really intriguing and creative way of blending concepts from cosmology, mathematics and black hole physics into one speculative model. I'll break it down, show how it aligns (or doesn't) with existing theories, and give my honest take on its strengths and limits. I'm drawing from established physics here, but keep in mind that the very early universe, especially anything close to a "beginning", is still one of the biggest open questions in science. That's where general relativity breaks down and quantum effects likely take over.

From what I understand, you're proposing that the universe doesn't have a sharp "start" like the traditional Big Bang singularity, which is often pictured as a point or "dot". Instead it's more like an infinite process where you can keep going backward in time and it gets denser and denser, like approaching a point on a circle but never quite reaching it because pi has infinite, non-repeating decimals. That ties into an eternal regression. There is no absolute beginning because time and density can be traced infinitely backward, much like Zeno's paradoxes where you halve distances forever without arriving.

The "core" of the universe acts like a dynamic black hole that constantly emits radiation (perhaps Hawking radiation), and that fuels the expanding cosmos. This black hole isn't static, it's in a cycle of compression and emission.

And the black holes we observe today mirror this process. They pull in matter, reach an event horizon and re-emit it as radiation until they evaporate, maybe recycling into new structures. So the whole universe could be part of a larger cyclic loop, like a circle where beginnings and ends blur.

This has a poetic, philosophical flavor. It treats the cosmos as self-sustaining and infinite in both directions and avoids a hard "creation" moment. It's not unlike how some thinkers use math, like pi's irrationality, as a metaphor for unresolved infinities in nature.

**Basically,** Grok summed it up as an infinite process with a cycling black hole core, not a sharp start.

## Where it echoes existing theories

Your speculation isn't entirely unique. It echoes several ideas physicists have proposed over the years, though often with more mathematical rigor and without the direct pi metaphor, which seems like your personal twist to show asymptotic infinity.

No true beginning and infinite regression. This aligns closely with models that avoid a singularity by proposing an "eternal" or boundless start. For instance the Hartle-Hawking no-boundary proposal, from Stephen Hawking and James Hartle, says the universe has no edge in time, much like the surface of a sphere has no beginning or end. Near the "Big Bang", time transitions from imaginary (spacelike) to real, so there's no "before" to reach, just an infinite smoothing out. It's a way to sidestep the infinite density problem by making the early universe finite but boundless, similar to your idea of approaching forever without arriving.

Cyclic universes. Theories like Conformal Cyclic Cosmology (CCC), proposed by Roger Penrose, describe the universe as going through infinite cycles or "aeons". Each cycle ends in a vast, empty state after black holes evaporate, and that state conformally rescales into the Big Bang of the next aeon. There's no absolute start, just eternal recurrence.

Penrose even points to possible evidence in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, like faint rings from black holes of earlier aeons. Your cyclic black hole emission fits here, because black holes play a key role in "seeding" the next cycle through their evaporation.

A universe inside a black hole. This is a big overlap. Models like the ones from Nikodem Poplawski suggest our universe could be the inside of a black hole in a parent universe, where the Big Bang is a "Big Bounce" from collapse and not a singularity.

Instead of crunching to infinity, torsion (a twisting in spacetime) or quantum effects cause a rebound and push matter out through a white hole, the opposite of a black hole. That creates a nested, maybe infinite hierarchy of universes, and each black hole births a new cosmos inside it. Your central black hole that emits radiation to drive expansion mirrors this, especially if the "core" is what's left of that parent black hole's collapse.

Black hole radiation and cycles. You're spot on that black holes are not "dead". They emit Hawking radiation and eventually evaporate, maybe recycling energy. In some speculative models this evaporation could seed new universes or feed cosmic cycles. There's also the holographic principle, where the universe is like a 3D projection from a 2D black hole surface, and that adds to the idea of nested infinities.

Pi and infinity as metaphors. Pi isn't directly used in these theories, but your analogy gets the essence of asymptotic behavior in cosmology, like how density increases infinitely as you approach the singularity but never "hits" it in bounce models. It's similar to Zeno's paradoxes or infinite series in math, which have come up in discussions of the Big Bang. Some folks online have drawn parallels to pi for infinite beginnings and tied it to no-boundary or cyclic ideas.

Other related concepts are "bouncing cosmologies", where the universe contracts and expands again and again (though some studies argue they still need an ultimate start), and eternal inflation, where our universe is one bubble in an infinite multiverse with no global beginning.

Has anyone "put this together" exactly like you? Not word for word, but the pieces are out there in papers, books (like Penrose's *Cycles of Time*) and online discussions. Your synthesis, with the pi metaphor, the square (maybe as a non-point singularity?) and the focus on a dynamic central black hole, is a fresh personal spin. It's a bit like how lay thinkers sometimes reframe pro ideas, and it's cool that you connect dots across fields.

**Basically,** The pieces exist: no-boundary, Penrose's cyclic aeons, universes inside black holes, bouncing cosmologies.

## The honest verdict

Then it gave its honest opinion.

I love this kind of bold speculation. It shows a deep intuition for how infinity, cycles and black holes could solve the "what came before?" puzzle without a magical start. The pi analogy is especially clever to show why a true beginning might be unreachable, like the endless digits of an irrational number.

It fits the philosophical side of physics, where infinities often signal that our theories are incomplete, and quantum gravity for example might erase singularities altogether.

But while parts of it are backed up, the full model runs into problems with observations. The universe looks remarkably homogeneous and isotropic, the same in all directions, on large scales, and there's no evidence of a "central core" black hole. Expansion is uniform and driven by dark energy, not by radiation from a single point.

The Big Bang is well supported by evidence like the CMB, the redshift of galaxies and the amount of light elements, and all of that points to a hot, dense state about 13.8 billion years ago. Infinite regression models struggle to explain this without fine-tuning.

Black holes evaporate slowly, over trillions of years for stellar ones, and their radiation is thermal, not structured enough to directly "build" an expanding universe like ours. Also in standard cosmology the universe isn't collapsing into a black hole, it's accelerating outward. And pi's role here is a metaphor. In real equations, black hole entropy for example involves pi, it's finite in use, and infinities in physics often get resolved by new theories.

So it's not the consensus view, which leans toward a quantum-resolved Big Bang, maybe in a multiverse. But it's not crackpot either. It's in the spirit of real alternatives like CCC or black hole cosmologies, which some experts take seriously. If you're into this, I'd recommend Penrose's work or Poplawski's papers for versions with more math behind them. Keep thinking about it, ideas like yours push the boundaries. If you want to refine it or ask about specific evidence, send me details.

**Basically,** Not the consensus and not crackpot either. Observations push back, but it sits near real alternatives.