: : : Nothing escapes from a black hole. Conditions prior : : to the big bang were, by all accounts, an extreme case : : of black hole. So how could the big bang result in : : expansion? : Ah, but that's assuming that the conditions in the early universe were the same as now--which wasn't the case.

: The early universe was in a state that can best be describes as a 'false vaccuum' The energy density was so high that the four forces that we are familiar with today were unified--including gravity.

: What let this incredibly dense state expand--well, parts of space began to cool and fall through a phase change (much as water freezes -- a phase change from a very homogeneous isotropic state to a ordered, non-isotropic state)

: This 'phase change' from false vaccuum to real vaccuum drove a process called 'inflation.' The universe expanded far faster than the speed of light! (and remember, it wasn't the the good-ol' fabric of space time we're familiar with was being stretched, it was actually 'freezing out' during the expansion.)

: Clear as mud? Good. Here's some references to check out : Alan Guth, Hyperinflation Theory : Micho Kaku -- "Hyperspace" an excellent book

Thanks for the references, I will try to check up on them.

I just read a fairly mindbending article in the April Scientific American magazine, concerned with a current disagreement about whether information falling into a black hole is lost; also ideas on particles falling into a hole decomposing into their com- ponent strings ("Black Holes and the Information Paradox" by Leonard Susskind).