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THE FABRIC of the COSMOS, Brian Greene, 2004
```(annotated and with added bold highlights by Epsilon=One)
```(annotated and with added bold highlights by Epsilon=One)
Chapter 13 - The Universe on a Brane
New Visions of Spacetime
The braneworld scenario and the cyclic cosmological model it spawned are both highly speculative. I have discussed them here not so much because I feel certain that they are correct, as because I want to illustrate the striking new ways of thinking about the space we inhabit and the evolution it has experienced that have been inspired by string/M-theory. If we are living within a three-brane, the centuries-old question regarding the corporeality of three-dimensional space would have its most definite answer: space would be a brane, and hence would most definitely be a something. It might also not be anything particularly special as there could be many other branes, of various dimensions, floating within string/M-theory's higher dimensional expanse. And if cosmological evolution on our three-brane is driven by repeated collisions with a nearby brane, time as we know it would span only one of the universe's many cycles, with one big bang followed by another, and then another.
To me, it's a vision that's both exciting and humbling. There may be much more to space and time than we anticipated; if there is, what we consider to be "everything" may be but a small constituent of a far richer reality.
To me, it's a vision that's both exciting and humbling. There may be much more to space and time than we anticipated; if there is, what we consider to be "everything" may be but a small constituent of a far richer reality.