WHERE DID THE UNIVERSE COME FROM

The ultimate mystery is inspiring new ideas and new experiments. No one knows how the first space, time, and matter arose. And scientists are grappling with even deeper questions. If there was nothing to begin with, then where did the laws of nature come from. How did the universe "know" how to proceed. Why do the laws of nature produce a universe that is so hospitable to life. Understanding how the universe began requires a better theory of how space, time, and matter are related. This new theory is called "string theory. This theory may help us better understand where the universe came from. String theory is based on new ideas that have not yet been tested. The theory assumes, that the basic particles in nature are not point particles but are shaped like strings. And the theory requires-and predicts- that space has more than three dimensions in which we move. According to one version of string theory, the particles and forces that make up our world are confined to three dimensions we see- except for gravity, which can "leak" out into the extra dimensions. String theory has led to some unusual new scenarios for the origin of the universe. In one scenario, the Big Bang could have been triggered when our universe collided with a "parallel universe" made of these extra dimensions. These ideas have formulated into a scientific story of genesis called String Theory Landscape. This combines string theory and cosmic inflation. String theory asserts that the basic building blocks of reality are vibrating, one dimensional loops of energy that quiver in ten or more dimensions to create elementary particles and fundamental forces of nature. Cosmic inflation proposes that the Big Bang began with a period of exponential expansion that swelled our universe from a fragile quantum speck to a vast mirror of emptiness two hundred million light years wide in a micro-second. It is speculated this inflation occurs in distant corners of the cosmos, creating a web of related universes that connect to form a much larger "multiverse."