Percy writes:
This is an excellent question, and I've often wondered about this myself. Maybe one of the cosmologists will check in and answer this one. I think I see the same problem you do. When too much matter is gathered in too small a space, then you get a black hole. Clearly all the matter of the universe gathered at a single point is sufficiently dense to form a black hole. Given that nothing ever leaves a black hole, except extremely slowly via Hawking radiation, how did the universe ever grow to it's current size?
In Brian Greene's book "The Fabric of the Cosmos" he says that gravity can be negative under certain conditions. He theorizes that gravity was negative at T=0 at that this caused the virtually instant expansion of our universe.
This he says,(at least as I understand it which is highly suspect), is because the Higgs field existed at T=0 in a high energy, negative pressure state. Under those circumstances gravity was repulsive or negative and caused a monumemntal amount of expansion until about T=10-35 secs.
If you have Greene's book it is in Chap 10.
Everybody is entitled to my opinion.