We Probably Live On An Inflating Brane-World

Brane-world models where observers are trapped within the thickness of a 3-brane offer novel perspectives on gravitation and cosmology. In this essay, I would argue that the problem of a late epoch acceleration of the universe is well explained in the framework of a 4-dimensional de Sitter universe embedded in a 5-dimensional de Sitter spacetime. While a 5D anti de Sitter space background is important for studying conformal field theories – for its role in the AdS/CFT correspondence – the existence of a 5-dimensional de Sitter space is crucial for finding an effective 4D Newton constant that remains finite and a normalizable zero-mode graviton wave function.