Expansion after Big Bang

[GregW75]

Has it been discussed that the reason the early universe was able to expand so rapidily in those first few seconds was because of the massive amount of mass and energy involved. If Mass can be energy and energy can be mass, and mass can "bend" space, then great amounts of energy should also be able to bend space as well. So at the instant of the big bang, wouldn't all of space around the singularity have been "bent" or warped, allowing for the new energy/matter to spread out at faster than light speed?

Also, they say the universe is increasing in size and the expansion is actually getting faster. What is the current speed of this expansion, expressed in light speed if possible (ie. 0.5light speed)? Thanks.

 

[SpeedFreek]

You need to know more than speed, you need to know at what distance objects would be moving at that speed.

The rate of expansion is around 70 kilometres per second, at a distance of around 3.2 million light years. So that means the rate would be around 140 km/s per 6.4 million light years, and so on.

A little under 14 billion light-years away, the rate of expansion is the speed of light.

The edge of the observable universe, the most distant place from which we have received light, has been expanded away to something around 46 billion light-years away by now, and is receding at over 3 times the speed of light.

 

[ramparts]

Has it been discussed that the reason the early universe was able to expand so rapidily in those first few seconds was because of the massive amount of mass and energy involved. If Mass can be energy and energy can be mass, and mass can "bend" space, then great amounts of energy should also be able to bend space as well. So at the instant of the big bang, wouldn't all of space around the singularity have been "bent" or warped, allowing for the new energy/matter to spread out at faster than light speed?

It's not enough. The matter and energy we know of wouldn't be able to cause the extremely rapid, exponential expansion required for inflation. In order to get that you need a sort of exotic energy field (often called the inflaton) which isn't a part of the standard model of particle physics.