D-branes and Cosmological Singularities

The motion of a test Dq-brane in a Dp-brane background is studied. The induced metric on the test brane is then interpreted as the cosmology of the test brane universe. One is then able to resolve the resulting cosmological singularities. In particular, for a D3-brane in a D5-brane background, one finds a 3+1 dimensional FRW universe with equation of state $p = \ed$. It has been argued that this may have been the dominant form of matter at very early times.