Smooth ``creation'' of an open universe in five dimensions

Abstract

We present a non-singular instanton describing the creation of an open universe with a compactified extra dimension. The four dimensional section of this solution is a singular instanton of the type introduced by Hawking and Turok. The ``singularity'' is viewed in five dimensions as a smooth bubble of ``nothing'' which eats up a portion of spacetime as it expands. Flat space with a compact extra dimension is shown to be gravitationally metastable, but sufficiently long lived if the size of the extra dimension is large compared with the Planck length.