How fast and far did the early Universe expand.

[ryan]

gravity choosing has something to do freewill I bet, so maybe by design we can't tell we are getting bigger :laughing-smiley-014

seriously though it is my understanding that the influence of gravity doesn't taper off to nil despite the distance of separation, that if two masses are given enough time they will eventually merge no matter how far apart.

maybe it has something to do with the Gravitational constant interfering with gravity of individual or collective masses.

It's not that the force of gravity goes to zero anywhere, it's just that that is where the dark energy overcomes the gravity. Someone on FT gave an analogy that makes sense. It was that you can imagine put pieces of tape on a balloon then blowing it up. The taped parts will not stretch because of the reacting force of the tape (which is the gravity). But the other parts of the balloon are weaker, so they will stretch first.

The big rip theory says that the dark energy will eventually overcome all of the gravity as the expansion of the universe accelerates. It even says that it will eventually overcome atomic forces and rip them apart. See, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Rip .