[ZeitgeistSurfer]

Someone ping me when we have answers to questions such as: Where did the marble-size universe come from? If the Big Bang happened at time X, what was there before time X? Seems to me any Theory of Everything must explain how space-time started and what existed (if that's the right word) before it started (if that concept means anything).

[snarks_when_bored]

It's quite likely that 'nothingness' is unstable. If even the slightest blip of false vacuum were to appear out of nothingness, that would suffice to start inflation rolling. And then, as Guth points out in the passage I quoted in Post #28,

"[e]ven though the false vacuum is decaying, the expansion outruns the decay and the total volume of false vacuum actually increases with time rather than decreases. Thus inflation does not end everywhere at once, but instead inflation ends in localized patches, in a succession that continues ad infinitum."

[silverleaf]

Maybe our universe is here because nature abhors a naked singularity...

Check this out:

http://www.theory.caltech.edu/people/preskill/nyt_bet_story.html