Stephen Sackur of HardTalk (BBC News) interviews mathematical physicist and inventor of Twistor Theory Sir Roger Penrose about his latest theory on what may have existed before the Big Bang. Penrose has devoted his life to the biggest questions; from the origins of the universe to human consciousness. In 1955, while still a student, he reinvented the generalized matrix inverse, before earning his PhD at Cambridge. In 1965, Penrose proved that singularities (such as black holes) could be formed from the gravitational collapse of immense, dying stars. He is well known for his discovery of Penrose tilings, and his invention of spin networks, which later came to form the geometry of spacetime in loop quantum gravity. He was influential in popularizing what are commonly known as Penrose diagrams.
