[PatrickHenry]

The "inflation" does proceed FTL. It is an inflation of space itself , and thus no matter (AFAIK) is being shunted around at FTL speeds, and no information is transferred FTL; hence, no violation of the Theory of Relativity.

I too defer to Physicist. But I think that the inflationary expansion of space -- you're correct in that -- does involve moving those photons, which are in space. Perhaps this is a minor quibble to prevent Enstein from spinning in his grave. And as I tried to say before, this doesn't involve transferring information FTL, because it's strictly one-way, and no one is "out there" to receive this information. Thus no causality violations. If causality is preserved, I can sleep easy.

[bryan1276]

The universe is not expanding, contrary to popular myth. It is a closed system in which things die. If the universe were ever expanding--creating itself out of nothing--there would be no laws, no physics, and nothing to guage anything by. See Exodus 28-40 for the dimension of the pyramid shaped universe (it may be a cone, but most likely a pyramid shape).

[RightWhale]

the inflationary expansion of space -- you're correct in that -- does involve moving those photons, which are in space

Did photons appear during or before the inflationary period? If they did appear, could they go anywhere without being absorbed by some kind of intergalactic gas [before the stars and galaxies appeared]?

[Physicist]

I too defer to Physicist.

God's honest truth? I can't help you here. While I understand Guth's contention that inflation proceeds faster than light, causing different portions of the universe to lose causal contact with each other, it is not exactly clear to me why it doesn't run afoul of special relativity. I think I can regurgitate the causality argument that permits it, but the math has eluded me.

Here's another misunderstanding I have about inflation. It's rather technical and I hesitate to mention it here, but I can't resist the opportunity to drop names, because I actually asked this question to a panel consisting of Guth, Michael Turner, Paul Steinhardt and Burt Ovrut, the giants of inflationary cosmology. Other cosmology giants such as Max Tegmark and Miriam Cvetic were there to speak up if they misspoke. (I was even sitting next to Alan Guth's mom at the time; although I didn't expect her to contribute to the discussion, some mojo might have rubbed off.)

We know that the total energy of the universe is zero. The problem is that mass, as well as energy, is conserved. (Suppose, for example, I have a pi0 of 135 MeV that decays into two photons of 67.5 MeV. The photons are massless by themselves, but together they still represent an invariant mass of 135 MeV.) But while there is negative energy (gravitational fields) there is no such thing as negative mass. I can't meaningfully discuss "the mass of the universe" as a concept, but I can state with confidence that there exists at least 100 kilograms of mass in the universe, because that is my mass. So since the universe started out with less than the amount of energy this represents, where did all my mass come from?

The answer was that it comes directly from the collapse of the false vacuum, and that mass conservation itself is only an effective global symmetry anyway. That's probably the correct answer, but again, the math eludes me.

[rightofrush]

I have long thought that "c" was just the limit to the transfer of information by the EM spectrum. If you were to exceed light of light, objects before you would fade to the UV, then black, while objects to your rear would fade to IR before turning black.