What is the state of the Early Universe?
  As we follow our Universe to early times, we find that matter was crushed to high densities, somewhat similar to the behavior at a black hole singularity. String theory has made progress in explaining the internal structure of black holes, so we would like to extrapolate the ideas learnt from black holes to the early Universe. If we assume that we want the most probable state of the Universe at early times, then we should look at the kind of state that describes a generic black hole. This suggests a definite equation of state for the matter in the early Universe. Quantum effects can stretch across macroscopic distances in black holes, and these might be important in understanding the early Universe as well. 
Samir D. Mathur