Hmm;
OK. I get that the two have independent causes but don't both directly change the shape of spacetime and thereby the positions of things in it ?
Ie: doesn't inflation stretch it in all directions and gravity warps it & creates wells etc bringing things closer ?
Until now, I have assumed that the oldest galaxies, 13.75 billion light years away, got there courtesy of inflation. If so, inflation has caused an apparent trajectory. (When reversed I think this trajectory actually gives rise to the original singularity, (the Egg)).
Anyway, apparently, matter & gravity combined after 9 billion years of inflation to form stars. So inflation which seemingly causes diverging trajectories (on the big scale) has been going a lot longer than gravity has !
If this is so, I don't get that gravity could have had enough time to create convergence of galaxies already set on very fast divergent trajectories. I guess it comes down to how far things were apart when gravity started to have a comparable influence on Inflation.
Nowadays, I understand that the latest WMAP 7 year data set reveals a Hubble constant (the rate at which the universe is expanding) of 70.4 +/- 1.4 kms per sec per megaparsec. That's about 54 km/sec between Earth and Andromeda. I read that Andromeda is moving at about 100 to 140 km/sec towards the Milky Way.
At the very least, I guess one could say that Inflation and Gravity seem to have comparable magnitudes in their influence on galaxies !
Interesting. And "Thank You" for all your comments. They are actually helping me to think through this. (Perhaps I'll become a better contributer to future forum discussions, as a result).
Cheers
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