The Little Bang

Although 2 days ago scientists announced the first evidence supporting the expansion of the Universe from less than the size of a sub-atomic particle to the size of a grapefruit very, very shortly (10^-32 seconds) after the Big Bang, a recent Horizon programme on BBC Four suggested that the generally held opinion now is that the Big Bang was preceded by something else. The idea I found most interesting was put forward by Roger Penrose. My understanding of what he said may be wrong but this is how I saw it. The Universe currently appears to be expanding at an increasing rate and if this continues for, I'm not sure how long but let us say, many trillions of years, then eventually all matter will disappear and only photons of light will remain. In the absence of matter, space and time can no longer exist, which means that all the energy in the Universe will be contained in an infinitely small space (i.e., no space) and outside of time. Well, that seems rather a high concentration of energy and it wouldn't be surprising if at some point out of time it went pop, in a tiny little bang that actually turned out to be rather big. However, it appears that the first particles of matter, quarks (and antiquarks), were only formed after the Universe had reached the size of a grapefruit which would mean that time and space were created in the absence of, and therefore existed in the absence of, matter and that appears to contradict what happens at the "end" of the Universe. So I've probably gone down the wrong mind corridor somewhere. I'm only doing this to exercise the old neurons in the hope that while they're buzzing the Alzheimer's plaques will have less chance of getting a hold.