Re:The paper (Score 2, Interesting)

That's a different paper; the one cited in the story is posted on arXiV here http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0610213 The difference between the two papers is the causal patches you mention. The causal patch concept isn't in the former. The latest paper takes care of the entropy problem caused by a contracting universe by distributing entropy among each causal patch. Just before the Big Rip, expansion reverses and the patches contract into an infinite number of separate universes, each taking a little bit of entropy. One patch becomes/stays our universe. These patches are called causal patches because they don't interact with each other -- no light, gravity or other force can bridge the space between the patches. There's a press release about this http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/jan07/newmodel012 907.html