We live in the era of a cosmological revolution. The discovery in 2015 of gravitational waves from the merger of multiple black holes of stellar mass closes the problem of "dark matter," the existence of which could not be explained for over half a century. This discovery led to the creation of a model of an oscillating Universe, in the dynamics of which gravitational radiation and black holes play a key role. Stephen Hawking believed that nothing could affect us before the Big Bang. We believe he was wrong: the history of the Universe before the Big Bang is important for our cosmological cycle, and relics of past cycles are abundantly scattered around. And the main relic objects are massive black holes. For the first time, this book describes cyclic cosmology, explaining the physical mechanism of the Big Bang and the modern acceleration of the expansion of the Universe (the phenomenon of positive cosmological constant or "dark energy"). A popular explanation of key cosmological issues and their resolution using the theory of an oscillating universe is accessible to a wide range of readers interested in this topic.

About the author:
Nikolai Gorkavy, Ph.D. in Physics and Mathematics (Moscow State University, 1990), laureate of the USSR State Prize (1989) and the Gorkavy Prize.State Prize of the USSR (1989) and the Robert Goddard Prize (NASA/GSFC, 2013).Robert Goddard Award (NASA/GSFC, 2013). Author of more thanhundred scientific articles, three scientific monographs and six popular science books. Asteroid 4654 Gor'kavyj is named in his honour.