Science has never properly explained how matter and Time could suddenly snap into existence from nothing, and we now accept there is no such thing as nothing anyway, as many have sagely pointed out, so linear time was in big trouble. Here was an answer that needed none of the usually ultra-impossible ‘day one’ concepts as before, and solved the Flatness Problem as we will see. We cannot get something out of nothing, as every chemistry student knows only too well, and only with a cycle does this Law of the conservation of matter still make sense, and it appears nature might agree. This simple answer may be true, since simplicity is a great and powerful advantage in any search for truth, as William of Occam also knew in 1340, and unwittingly invented a virtual razor to prove it, as every scientist knows. The weird idea was gaining ground. Simplicity is more likely to be true, he suggested, to paraphrase.

There was no getting away from it: we needed a new theory to explain everything a little better than before, and the simplest solution appeared to be a cycle, not linear time, as nearly all of us had thought for many centuries.