Did dark energy give us our cosmos? – space – 17 January 2009 – New Scientist.
According to Paul Steinhardt and colleagues dark energy stretches out the Universe for a trillion years, then it bashes into another Universe in a higher dimension, causing a new “Big Bang”. The stretching ensures that the clashing Universes are flat enough that their encounter doesn’t create too many regions of over density that collapse into massive black-holes and gobble up space-time.
Makes me wonder if Life from a previous cycle can’t find a handy place to hide while the two clash together in a Big Bang. Thus Life could end up being older than the current space-time. Maybe.