Why is There Something Rather Than Nothing?

Did Everything Come From Nothing, Or Was There a “Source”?

If there was a source, where did it come from? Even among scientists there is disagreement on this issue. See: Big Fuse Over Big Bang. There are now two major competing theories about just where the Universe came from.

Image Source       Cosmic Bubble      by Bill M. Tracer

The Inflation Theory, which features the Big Bang, is the most prevalent of these contenders. But the relatively new notion on the scene is called M-Theory, or Membrane Theory. M-Theory is an 11 dimensional version of the 5 forms of String Theory, which unlike M-Theory suggests the Universe has only 10 dimensions. Mounting evidence has given the 11 dimensional M-Theory the leg up over the String Theories, causing them to essentially fall out of favor. You might say the 5 String Theories have unraveled, and are now being enveloped by the Membrane. According to M-Theory there is what we might call an extra-cosmic domain far beyond our perception, in which various kinds of membranes stretch off into relative infinity. On occasion these membranes collide, and according the theory this is when a Cosmos such as ours comes into existence. To those of us within such a Cosmos it appears not unlike a kind of Big Bang, but in actuality is the area of collision or perhaps even an area of overlap between membranes.

Right now, what we currently know about those early days of the Universe, can lead us to either of these cosmological theories. However each theory has different predictions regarding the intensity of what they call a residual gravity wave from that period of time shortly after the inception of the Cosmos, about 13.7 billion years ago. If Inflation Theory is correct this gravity wave will be detected at a certain predicted level, but if M-Theory is correct it will be much less intense, almost undetectable. We may learn the answer within the next 2 to 4 years, for in the very near future data will be gathered by two different programs that will help scientists learn which of these cosmological models is really on the right track.