VIOLATION OF THE WEAK ENERGY CONDITION IN INFLATING SPACETIMES

We argue that many future-eternal inflating spacetimes are likely to v iolate the weak energy condition. It is possible that such spacetimes may not enforce any of the known averaged conditions either. If this i s indeed the case, it may open the door to constructing nonsingular, p ast-eternal inflating cosmologies. Simple nonsingular models are, howe ver, unsatisfactory, and it is not clear if satisfactory models can be built that serve the problem of the initial singularity.