Bouncing and colliding branes

In a braneworld description of our universe, we must allow for the possibility of having dynamical branes around the time of the big bang. Some properties of such domain walls in motion are discussed here, for example the ability of negative-tension domain walls to bounce off spacetime singularities and the consequences for cosmological perturbations. In this context we will also review a colliding branes solution of heterotic M-theory that has been proposed as a model for early universe cosmology.