What was it that expanded during the inflationary period that followed the big bang.?

Question

Specifically, was matter travelling away from the center of the big bang at a rate faster than light (which would be impossible) or was some non-material aspect of the "fabric" of space expanding at a tremendous rate?

Answer 1

It is wrong to think of the big bang expansion as matter traveling away from a center. Really it is just a stretching of the distance between things. In fact it is even wrong to picture the universe having a unique center.

Answer 2

My own pet theory is that there was not one Big Bang, but several, and it's a continuing process. The black holes are the key. Matter condenses into the super massive objects, and once one reaches a critical mass, it explodes, and all the matter that has gone into it is projected out into space, regaining it's density. Possibly this happens once most of what we know as matter today compresses down into black holes, and then those black holes eventually compress into each other. Or it could be that each black hole simply gathers on it's own, and it's when two black holes collide that we have a big bang. That one sounds more reasonable than all the black holes joining together first, I'm thinking that a combination of two black holes would create a pretty big explosion as they ripped each other apart. Even if a much smaller one approached a much larger one, one of them would probably explode. And I believe there is a rate faster than the speed of light, but that one of two reasons stops us from seeing anything moving faster than light. Either our sensory perceptions are based on light reflections, therefore anything faster can't be seen or measured, or our universe really does have a speed limit, but it's not that nothing can go faster, but that if it does, it moves into another dimension of some kind. But then again, that's just from a guy with way too much time on his hands to think about stuff like this.

Answer 3

If i'm not mistaken, it was energy that eventually coalesced into plasma and finally into physical matter as gasses (like hydrogen) which eventually coalesced further into various bodies like stars, planetoids, etc.

As for the fabric of space, as I understand it, as the universe expands, our perception of what is infinite also expands, because the universe as we know it governs our idea of infinity.

From what I remember of my physics lessons in college, the coalescing of matter from the energy of the big bang was extremely rapid initially, and slowed down as time progressed.

This gets even more complicated when we realise that time was also skewed during the big bang, being that time is based on the perspective of the observer, time itself would have been extremely 'bent' and so any measurement of the speed of light -which is based on distance travelled by a photon in a specific amount of time- would also be skewed, since both distance and time were distorted by the expansion of the universe within which any viewer would have to be to observe it.
if that makes sense.

Answer 4

It would have been the fabric of spacetime expanding, because that is actually what is expanding.


The Universe expands much like a balloon. Put dots all over the balloon and then blow the balloon up. The dots all move away from one another, even though the dots themselves are not moving on the balloon. That is how matter is expanding. It goes for the ride on the expanding spacetime fabric.

Answer 5

Jello pudding

a squared + Jack Abramov + Fat Albert cubed = Bill Cosby

Bill Cosby + lots of money + 1987 Denver Broncos = Jello Pudding

Answer 6

The laws of Physics as we know it were followed by matter and energy after the inflation. During the inflation phase, the quantum theory and general relativity were unified.

Answer 7

Energy and light expanded. And presently your mind!