Do we live in Middle-earth?

[The Half-Hobbit]

found one!

Linde is best known for his evangelical advocacy of a concept called inflation, which holds that in its very early infancy the universe underwent a brief but stupendous growth spurt before settling down to its current more leisurely rate of expansion. In part because of his contributions, inflation has become a widely accepted model in contemporary cosmology. But no one takes the concept as far as Linde does. He contends that the same basic mechanism spawned not only the observable universe--the galaxy-emblazoned realm we ponder through our telescopes--but also countless other universes being branched off from our own, universes that we’ll never see. He even speculates that our cosmos might have been deliberately created by beings in another one.
--From an article called (appropriately) The Universal Wizard. From the March '92 issue of Discover

[ April 12, 2002: Message edited by: The Half-Hobbit ]