it's basically the recognition that goes back to einstein that gaf gravity under certain circumstances can be repulsive. you drop the glass, it falls because the earth attracts it, the earth pulls things together. that's what gravity does. but actually einstein showed that under exotic circumstances, gravity can push things apart. the belief is that the, the possibility is that in the early universe, that exotic experiment was realized. there was an energy-suffer fusing space that pushed everything apart. that's why the universe started swelling in the first place. when you study this theory in detail, it seems to show that this outward swelling would not have been a unique, one-time event. it says there could be many of these big bang-like beginnings in a much larger cosmos, each giving rise to a swelling realm, giving rise to an observable universe that people like us could inhabit, but there'd be universes upon universe upon universe. this is the inflationary multiverse. and the nice thing about this approach is that the idea that space underwent this rapid swelling early on from th