Here follows the first part of the questions. Their appearance here is with thanks to Marcus and Nereids' encouragement:- Questions arise on what has been written for we ordinary people about how matter began – and on what has received little to no mention at all. To a cosmologist, these questions will show a simplistic line of thought, and certainly the universe is not of simple construction. But theorists could bear in mind that while they ‘dumb down’ books they write for the public (to enable us to understand better), they leave voids that logic says should contain something. These questions are about those voids. They may be naïve, but they have not yet been answered. If cosmological theory were wholly satisfactory within the research community, this outsider would not dare to question it. The questions relate to the big bang itself – to the event, and how it is described. The phases after the big bang – the quark-gluon plasma era, the lepton era, and so on, are beyond this questioner’s grasp. Whether the elusive Higgs bosun will be dislodged from its hiding place, by how much are anti-matter particles quicker to decay than their matter counterparts, and whether elegant string theory will make further headway and bring with it new dimensions, are questions for the gifted enquirer. It is easier for a simple person to ponder the first phase of all, when there was nothing other than energy. 1) The very early universe was governed by quantum mechanics. Is there no common ground between quantum mechanics and classical Newtonian physics? Admittedly the latter break down at velocities approaching the speed of light, and big bang events apparently occurred at that speed. But does physical law as applied through quantum mechanics have to be different in every respect to classical law? One reads that all four fundamental forces of nature are subject to the same mediation by discrete packets of energy-matter, because before a single force of nature broke symmetry, all laws were the same. Laws governing nature’s symmetry before the big bang were laws of potential. One of those laws dictated that it would be the force of gravity that should break symmetry. So gravity cannot be governed by the same packets of energy-matter that direct the functions of the other three forces. If all four forces were subject to the same law, they would either have remained in symmetry, or they would all have broken symmetry at the same moment. So there would either have been no universe at all, or it would have been vastly different to the one with which we are quite familiar. Gravity has to be subject to distinct physical law, because it was made to break symmetry first. Richard Feynman, a well-loved and renowned Nobel Laureate, exhorted his students not to attempt to rationalise nature’s role in quantum theory. But being advised not to ask ‘How can it be like that?’ need not prevent us from asking questions about how it is. Nothing in quantum theory says that it is always counterintuitive. Is there no such event in quantum mechanics as a reaction to an action? If there is not, why is it impossible to find a reasoned explanation as to why there is not? Experts describe the big bang in few words, and they don’t discuss its action. They say simply that it was an explosion, but not an explosion of matter in space, because there was no matter and no space. That part is fair enough, but the events of an explosion are always describable. Intuition (based on geophysics) says that when gravity broke symmetry, it did so as the action of a physical event (the first), and that the other three forces were launched in equal reaction to it. This was a quantum moment, between nothing and something. The explosion, as a whole, would have involved the emergence of gravity as an implosive force, with the three reactionary forces creating expansion (or the explosion as is commonly described). There are always two ‘sides’ to any action, and I cannot understand (yet) why that isn’t the case at quantum levels as well. The conversion from energy to photons to matter would have taken place at sub-particle level. So does anything that changes from one condition to another: Never more so when changing from or to a state of zero. When gravity split, it did so with a bang – at the point of its detonation, at the centre of the singularity that rapidly inflated to become the singularity that is the universe of today. But surely the force of gravity imploded, and everything else exploded (or inflated). Everything that is, was packed into that singularity at its beginning. The oddity is not so much the singularity, but the nothing out of which it appeared. Some physicists are professionally squeamish about conditions of nothing. The first symmetry breaking occurred when gravity separated, yielding gravity and quantum electrodynamics. The next symmetry breaking (electromagnetism) occurred later. By then, inflation was rampant, caused by the pressure and the density of newly-appeared space. But why was there density and pressure? Was it because there was reaction to the force of gravity, which had imploded at the point of origin of space? The force of gravity, having broken symmetry, could hardly have done anything other than to remain centred on the point at which it appeared, because there was nowhere for it to go. The remaining three forces were hardly likely to have remained at that same point, if they were reacting against the force of gravity. Something had to give, and it wasn’t the force of gravitation. It seems logical that the processes of inflation would have begun. It is harsh to maintain that the big bang could not have featured a reaction to the breaking of symmetry by gravity, simply because it was subject to quantum mechanics. Why cannot quantum mechanics and classical physical law be complementary, with the former providing detailed and the latter general instruction? When gravity broke symmetry, did it do so with fifty percent of the bang’s energy? If it did, and if it remained at the point of origin, and if the inflationary (reactionary) forces were equal and of the other fifty percent, there seem to be grounds for supposing that there would be equilibrium between anti-matter and matter. If inflation is the product of anti-gravity, gravity should be the force of anti-matter. We know that energy-matter drives the inflationary forces: Why shouldn’t energy-gravity be the counterbalance? That the centre of universal mass would also be the universal centre of gravity is logical, and that it should also be the universe’s point of origin, is even more so. It seems that nature’s role in quantum theory need not always be weird. 2) Why don’t experts writing for the public emphasise more clearly that the universe has a point at which it originated? To demonstrate how galaxies are pulling further away from each other as the universe continues to expand, a visual aid is sometimes offered in the form of someone blowing up a balloon. Specks on the skin of the balloon enlarge as the balloon is inflated, and grow more distant from each other. They represent (fairly) the galaxies. As an analogy to demonstrate the increasing separation of the galaxies, it is fine. What the demonstration does not try to emphasise is that the universe is expanding from its point of origin. It would be most helpful if scientific authors would make clear that the cause of inflation of the singularity (or of the universe) is at its centre, and not outside it. The cause of a bang is at the centre of the area of disturbance it creates. The detonation of a seismic shot in water will cause a bubble to expand, before it collapses back in on itself. A subsurface ground shot will similarly send out a temporary ball of converted energy around its point of detonation. There is no immediate reason to think that a bang that starts a universe should be any different – other than that its action, coming out of nothing and going into nothing, would manifest itself as an implosive rather than an explosive force. This could be where nature’s role in quantum physics plays tricks with human conceptions of logic: But it could also help us to understand from where gravity operates on a universal scale: From its point of origin: Its centre of mass. That we have space in which to live is thanks to the bang’s reactive forces of inflation, it seems.