From Black Holes to Baby Universes: Exploring the Possibility of Creating a Cosmos in the Laboratory

We discuss the essential features of baby-universe production, starting from a description of black holes and wormholes, in terms of the causal structure of spacetime, and following a qualitative review of the connection between vacuum decay and inflation in early universe cosmology. Related open questions are also addressed, especially in connection with the possibility that baby universes could be formed within our present universe - either in a future particle accelerator, or spontaneously.