Quote:
Originally Posted by xelasnave
Ron you must have missed my question.... I am keeping a list of all of them.
alex
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Okay Alex, you ask questions so quickly that one can't keep up with the answers, so here is an excerpt form good old Wiki 
I will add some comment at the bottom.
Overview
Inflation suggests that there was a period of exponential expansion in the very early universe. The expansion is exponential because the distance between any two fixed observers is increasing exponentially, due to the metric expansion of space (a spacetime with this property is called a de Sitter space). The physical conditions from one moment to the next are stable: the rate of expansion, called the Hubble parameter, is nearly constant, which leads to high levels of symmetry. Inflation is often called a period of accelerated expansion because the distance between two fixed observers is increasing at an accelerating rate as they move apart. (However, this does not mean that the Hubble parameter is increasing, see deceleration parameter.)
Cosmic inflation has the important effect of smoothing out inhomogeneities, anisotropies and the curvature of space. This pushes the universe into a very simple state, in which it is completely dominated by the inflation field and the only significant inhomogeneities are the tiny quantum fluctuations in the inflation. Inflation also dilutes exotic heavy particles, such as the magnetic monopoles predicted by many extensions to the Standard Model of particle physics. If the universe was only hot enough to form such particles before a period of inflation, they would not be observed in nature, as they would be so rare that it is quite likely that there are none in the observable universe. Together, these effects are called the inflationary "no-hair theorem"[5] by analogy with the no hair theorem for black holes.
The "no-hair" theorem works essentially because the universe expands by an enormous factor during inflation. In an expanding universe, energy densities generally fall as the volume of the universe increases. For example, the density of ordinary "cold" matter (dust) goes as the inverse of the volume: when linear dimensions double, the energy density goes down by a factor of eight. The energy density in radiation goes down even more rapidly as the universe expands: when linear dimensions are doubled, the energy density in radiation falls by a factor of sixteen. During inflation, the energy density in the inflation field is roughly constant. However, the energy density in inhomogeneities, curvature, anisotropies and exotic particles is falling, and through sufficient inflation these become negligible. This leaves an empty, flat, and symmetric universe, which is filled with radiation when inflation ends.
A key requirement is that inflation must continue long enough to produce the present observable universe from a single, small inflationary Hubble volume. This is necessary to ensure that the universe appears flat, homogeneous and isotropic at the largest observable scales. This requirement is generally thought to be satisfied if the universe expanded by a factor of at least 1026 during inflation.[6] At the end of inflation, a process called reheating occurs, in which the inflation particles decay into the radiation that starts the hot big bang. It is not known how long inflation lasted but it is usually thought to be extremely short compared to the age of the universe. Assuming that the energy scale of inflation is between 1015 and 10 16 GeV, as is suggested by the simplest models, the period of inflation responsible for the observable universe probably lasted roughly 10-33 seconds.[7]
Motivation
Inflation resolves several problems in the Big Bang cosmology that were pointed out in the 1970s.[8] These problems arise from the observation that to look like it does today, the universe would have to have started from very finely tuned, or "special" initial conditions near the Big Bang. Inflation resolves these problems by providing a dynamical mechanism that drives the universe to this special state, thus making a universe like ours much more natural in the context of the Big Bang theory.
Okay, there are tons of links there and plenty to read but in good old plain basic English, here it comes (seeing you love my style  ).
If you believe in expansion (as you should because we can accurately measure the rate of expansion of the universe), then simply put when did it start?
There is no reason for you to think it didn't begin somewhere, sometime. Every observation of expansion in the universe can be reversed to reveal the origin of the expansion. If you have trouble understanding how they compute the rate of expansion, then join the club, that is hard to understand, but the fact that expansion did occur, regardless of the rate is what you need to come to terms with.
If there were no origin and it has just been expanding infinitely, this to my way of thinking is even harder to accept than the current singularity beginning theory.
Either way it is highly conceptual and when you write words like these, what does it really mean in your head, what do you imagine? What picture do you draw? Mighty hard to find the right words of course, therefore qualified physicists resort to mathematics to fully explain the theory.
So the final summary is really easy, it's either expanding or it ain't, and it either began or it didn't. I believe it is and did rather than isn't and didn't. My vote is for the positive as opposed to the negative, because when you select the negative, it would be nice to qualify, why not
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