Quote:
But one can imagine many possibilities, such as our hypothetical cyclic universe is one of an infinite number of cyclic universes, each spawned in like manner in an eternal vacuum.


This sounds like a possible answer, but it has two pitfalls:

1. It treats infinity as though it were an infinite series of finite periods, which doesn't really make sense.

2. If infinity could be treated in this way, an infinite number of finite periods would already have passed, so there would be no more to come. How can you have more than an infinite number?

There never was nothing.