New StringTheory Notion Redefines the Big Bang:

A group of theoretical physicists has recently published an interesting string-theory scenario that describes a new way to approach the development of the Big Bang. They propose that the universe began as a type of theoretical space-filling object called a “brane.”

“Perhaps the most ambitious problem in cosmology is the question of the initial conditions of the universe — what it looked like before expanding into the stars and planets we see today,” said a physicist involved in the study, Robert Leigh of the University of Illinois, to PhysOrg.com. “We propose that the universe, before expansion, was an unstable brane that decayed into innumerable string-loops to form the universe as we now know it.”