Hawking's Information Paradox solution

I’ll bet you guys must dread the non-scientists wandering in here with our laymen’s lack of deep underlying knowledge, but part of the fun of this place is getting the chance to ”rub shoulders’ with some very knowledgeable peopleThis idea of baby universes is one that I’ve often wondered about. The idea that each black hole in this universe might at some point lead to a new baby universe, and that our own universe originated from a black hole within a larger universe, which in turn may have originated similarly, etc. Okay, so there are some pretty serious problems regarding calculations of mass, etc, which requires this layman to develop his own scientific theory, i.e. it would only be possible to measure the mass of any given universe and it’s descendants, the mass of ”parent’ universes being undetectable. In the tree analogy, the ”weight’ of any branch would include all sub-branches, but not the branch or trunk from which it has sprung.But when I use the term ”undetectable’ in the previous paragraph, there is one other thing I wonder about.Once or twice I’ve seen an analogy used to try to describe the warping of the fabric of space-time as an object moves through it. The analogy is of a ball bearing rolling over a membrane. As it does so, it stretches and ”warps’ the membrane. Fair enough, it helps me to visualise what is happening, but I have a problem if the analogy is attempting to convey more than the 'visual' effect.The problem is that the ”warping’ of the membrane is caused by the gravitational pull of the earth acting upon the ball bearing. For the ball bearing analogy to work, does it mean that there must be some ”external’ gravitational force acting upon the object travelling through space-time to cause the ”warping’? If so, might this gravitational force not originate from other ”branches of the tree’ that we are otherwise unable to detect because they exist outside of our universe or its sub-branches?Okay. I’m going to go now, and will not be offended by any flak that comes my way as a result of my naivety and lack of understanding.

Cheers Son.I’m not sure if this helps me understand whether the ball bearing/membrane analogy is a good one though. In the analogy, the warping of the membrane will be mainly down to the earth’s gravitational force acting upon the bearing, causing it to warp the membrane. If you were to take the bearing to a part of the universe where the gravitational forces were much less strong, presumably the warping effect would be much less pronounced.The question I’m trying to ask is, how certain are we that the warping we observe in the fabric of space is entirely due to the gravitational forces acting upon it by the objects travelling through it?And whilst I’m on a roll with crazy, nave questions, I’d like to ask one more.As far as I understand it, science believes that the rate of expansion of the universe is still accelerating and there are those who have a problem with this, as they believe it ought not to be, given their understanding of the processes involved. So the question is, if there were external gravitational forces acting upon our universe, might that be a possible cause of the continued acceleration?

So are we saying that the warping of space-time is not caused solely by mass/energy? That space-time is ”naturally’ warped? Or is space-time comprised of mass/energy, which causes it to warp itself? Apologies for all the questions, but I’d always been led to believe that the warping was due to gravitational forces.Finally, isn’t the cosmological constant still a highly contentious issue?