Did dark energy give us our cosmos?
OUR universe may have arisen from seeds preserved in a universe that existed before the big bang - all thanks to dark energy.
One of the models put forward to explain how the universe began proposes that it is just the latest phase in a never-ending cycle. Proposed in 2002 by Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University and Neil Turok from the University of Cambridge, the model argues that our universe exists on a 3D region called a "brane" separated from similar branes by a fourth spatial dimension. Under the right conditions, these branes collide, triggering a big-bang-like event. After the collision, the branes bounce apart, before another collision occurs many billions of years later.
Did dark energy give us our cosmos? - space - 17 January 2009 - New Scientist
