[MHGinTN]

What is current thinking on the 'inflationary period'?... And at the bang, time and space, as we conceive of them, came into being. Certainly the speed of light is to our 'reception' of electromagnetic energy a constant, but might the spatio-temporal 'stretch' of the universe have made electromagnetic waves traverse spacetime at a different rate during the inflationary period? ... And one last inane question: wouldn't there have been a period in the 'birth' of the spatio-temporal universe when electromagentic energy didn't manifest and the entire universe was in effect 'darkness'?

[RadioAstronomer]

Here is a nice site you may enjoy: :-)

http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni/uni_101bbtest2.html

[edsheppa]

And at the bang, time and space, as we conceive of them, came into being.

I don't know if you've read Gott's book Time Travel in Einstein's Universe. In it he speculates that "in the beginning" there "was" a time warp (a region of space-time with closed time-like loops) and the universe sort of spews out of it. I found his book an interesting read.