DIY universe.

Playing God, take one.

A radical new project could permit human beings to create a "baby universe" in a laboratory in Japan. While it sounds like a dangerous undertaking, the physicists involved believe that if the project is successful, the space-time around a tiny point within our universe will be distorted in such a way that it will begin to form a new superfluid space, and eventually break off, separate in all respects from our experience of space and time, causing no harm to the fabric of our universe. [...]

[T]he baby universe has its own space-time and, as this inflates, the pressure from the true vacuum outside its walls continues to constrain it. As these forces compete, the growing baby universe is forced to bubble out from our space-time until its only connection to us is through a narrow space-time tunnel called a wormhole..."

Eventually, the "umbilical" connection between our space-time and the baby universe would be effectively cut, and the baby universe would enter into its own unique process of unending expansion. From our perspective, it would be lost inside a microscopic "black hole", which will not appear to expand into our space-time. Hawking radiation will be emitted and the tiny black hole will "evaporate", sealing the separation between the two universes.

Ultimately, this evaporation is what makes the project possible, but is also, perhaps, its most serious obstacle. It is expected that the separation between our space-time and the baby universe would occur so quickly, it might be impossible —within the limitations of our physical universe— to observe its having been created.

Read the article. The physics are less theoretical than they sound. (via jwz)