  This paper presents strong observational evidence of numerous previously
unobserved anomalous circular spots, of significantly raised temperature, in
the CMB sky. The spots have angular radii between 0.03 and 0.04 radians (i.e.
angular diameters between about 3 and 4 degrees). There is a clear cut-off at
that size, indicating that each anomalous spot would have originated from a
highly energetic point-like source, located at the end of inflation -- or else
point-like at the conformally expanded Big Bang, if it is considered that there
was no inflationary phase. The significant presence of these anomalous spots,
was initially noticed in the Planck 70 GHz satellite data by comparison with
1000 standard simulations, and then confirmed by extending the comparison to
10000 simulations. Such anomalous points were then found at precisely the same
locations in the WMAP data, their significance confirmed by comparison with
1000 WMAP simulations. Planck and WMAP have very different noise properties and
it seems exceedingly unlikely that the observed presence of anomalous points in
the same directions on both maps may come entirely from the noise.
Subsequently, further confirmation was found in the Planck data by comparison
with 1000 FFP8.1 MC simulations (with $l \leq 1500$). The existence of such
anomalous regions, resulting from point-like sources at the conformally
stretched-out big bang, is a predicted consequence of conformal cyclic
cosmology (CCC), these sources being the Hawking points of the theory,
resulting from the Hawking radiation from supermassive black holes in a cosmic
aeon prior to our own.
