On Sat, Aug 17, 2002 at 04:55:59PM -0700, Brent Meeker wrote: > I think what the paper says is that when matter/energy have > thinned out enough so that we have essentially empty space > again, a de Sitter universe, a vacuum fluctuation can start > a new universe.
You're not understanding the paper correctly. A de Sitter universe never thins out to essentially empty space. It thins out to a certain density and no further (I think because new vacuum energy is created as the universe expands.) So at any given moment there is always a minimal chance that the very sparse matter/energy can come together and recreate the present.
