Bosons and Bubbles: Building a Universe from Scratch

Where did we come from? Where are we going? Why do we exist?These are questions that we tend to associate with philosophers and theologians, but they're also critically important to certain fields of physics. Theorists speculate on what sort of weird parallel universes we could or could not have existed in. Cosmologists study the shape of space, hoping to glean a peek into the future and determine whether the Universe will end with a big crunch or a big freeze--or not at all. And particle physic...