That ours is a universe created from the collapse of another does not seem too far fetched to me. Perhaps the CERN Haden Collider will shed some light on dark matter or the Planck satellite will make some observations of particular patterns predicted in the CMB...exciting times ahead....
Subatomic matter behaves very differently to larger masses. One example of this estranged behavior is called the 'double slit experiment' introduced by physicist Thomas Young in 1805. This experiment consists of a machine that shoots a beam of photons, electrons or even atoms towards film screen - but before the particles reach the screen and leaves tiny marks, it needs to pass through either an upper slit, or a lower slit that are closely separated. Each slit can be closed, or both can be left opened by the choice of the observer.
Now, when the beam of particles hit the screen, you would suppose the particles had to pass through either the upper slit or the lower slit, yes? However, the strange thing is, is that if you close down one of slits, more particles reach the screen than if you left both slits open! How can this be? You would imagine more particles reaching the screen if both slits were opened - but this is not the case.
One strange answer came about. The particle wasn't a pointlike particle at all. It acted as though it were a wave!
If one uses the wave description, the problem seemed to go away. We know how waves act in the sea, and this also means that the particle will take these attributes on board.
A wave could reach both slits at the same time - and just like a wave coming into contact with two openings, the wave can split into two smaller waves, one, as i am sure you can guess, in each slit. If the two waves travel different paths, they can be made to interfere with themselves after passing the slits; in doing so, less waves reach the screen. If one slit is only open, the wave will travel through the slit, and, just like a wave hitting the shore, it will hit many places simultaneously on the screen - thus hitting more places with one slit open, than having both slits open.
However, the particle wasn't only just a wave - after all, when it hit the screen, it left a tiny 'pointlike' mark. Somehow when the wave hit the screen, it hit many places on the screen as dots. Thus, a new description had to made for a particle that traveled through space as a wave, and finishes its journey as a single object - this description has been come to be called the 'wave-particle duality.' The particle therego was in fact a wave and a particle simultaneously.
Why did the particle act as a wave?
Well, at first, physicists thought that the wave was a product of the human mind - it wasn't real, and it was just a means for us to keep track of experiments. The wave became to be called the 'quantum wave function.' This was a wave of possibilities. The wave probability enables us to calculate the possibility for a particle and its path, location, spin, orbital reference, ect. The wave spreads out over space, and resembles likelihoods, not actualities... or does it?
In 1957 physicist Hugh Everett the third, came up with a rather bizarre conclusion concerning the wave function. His idea was that if the experiment says that the particle passed through both slits at the same time, then both particles, the one traveling past the upper slit, and the particle traveling through the lower slit, must both exist.
Question is though, how and where does this extra ghostly particle exist? The answer was parallel universes. Somehow, an identical particle existed in a parallel world; the wave represented the amount of particles it was composed of, thus one particle passed the upper slit and a particle passed the lower slit, and each 'branch', or universe, it was represented as a wave, having quite a real effect in each universe.
However, why should the particle be a wave and then suddenly become a particle again? It turns out that our universe, according to Everett, is constantly splitting and merging every time some measurement is performed or when something comes into contact with something else.
Each time the universe split, it would represent the wave function splitting into as many possibilities as there where outcomes, and the merging would represent the universe becoming superimposed all over again. Thus, in the double slit experiment, when the particle moves through both the slits simultaneously, this represents the universe splitting, creating as many universes as the possibility allows - in this case, two universes - and the merging represents the pointlike dot when it hits the screen. However, it turns out that the experiment represents only two universes - yet, it turns out that our universe is in fact one in an infinite amount of parallel universes, all 'superpositioned' upon each other, like layers on a cake.
In Everett's intepretation, the wave function is a projection of other matter in parallel universes in their own present time. In my Big Flow Theory, each universe is unique, (finite as they are), the wave function we percieve cannot be seen from Everett's light.
Instead, all matter and energy, space and time (1), squeeze out of existence, and create a new big bang, the beginning of a new universe. It's like passing the parcel, on a grand scale.
The wave function we come to observe as having real effects on how other matter behaves, i declare, is a record of the statistical outcomes of how the matter should operate in a given spacetime vacuum. This statistical information is determined from previous states the matter and energy had existed as, so you can imagine, there is no universe ''out there,'' in this model that cannot sustain matter and energy. This was one of the main reasons why there needed to be a finite number of universe (each allowed to have matter). An infinity of them, would mean at least an infinite amount would have to be void of such matter, in replace of something even more bizarre.
It keeps it safe, but to answer why all these universes are allowed to have matter, would again be to say that the wave function of probability is shared among the universes, and each time it shares the energy, a slight change in the wave function occurs, and allows the universes to be different, but with the same quantum laws at their disposal.
(1) - Matter, according to relativity, are nothing but knots in the fabric of spacetime. And, after relativity, we found that spacetime and matter-energy are codependant. Remove one ingredient, and the rest follows.
