The Moon-Loop Hypothesis: Quantum-Gravity-Motivated Transitions Between Collapsing and Expanding Cosmological Branches

The Moon-Loop Hypothesis proposes a speculative cosmological framework in which the Big Bang may represent a transition from a gravitationally collapsing spacetime branch associated with a preceding universe, rather than an absolute beginning of spacetime. The hypothesis is motivated by three unresolved questions: the nature of the low-entropy initial state of our observable universe, the fate of information in gravitational collapse, and the absence of a complete theory unifying general relativity with quantum mechanics. The proposed framework draws conceptual inspiration from the ER=EPR conjecture, quantum information theory, and models of quantum-gravitational phase transitions. It hypothesizes that under conditions where classical gravitational collapse ceases to provide an adequate description, a quantum-gravitational transition could connect a collapsing spacetime branch to an expanding branch. In this interpretation, the Big Bang would represent the expansionary side of such a transition. This paper does not claim that ER=EPR, black-hole physics, or existing quantum-gravity theories currently establish such a mechanism. Instead, it proposes the Moon-Loop as a speculative hypothesis whose viability depends upon the construction of a mathematically consistent model and the identification of observational consequences that distinguish it from existing cosmological models.