  A macroscopic universe may emerge naturally from a Planck cell fluctuation by
unfolding through a stage of exponential expansion towards a homogeneous
cosmological background. Such primordial inflation requires a large and
presumably infinite degeneracy at the Planck scale, rooted in the unbounded
negative gravitational energy stored in conformal classes. This complex Planck
structure is consistent with a quantum tunneling description of the transition
from the Planck scale to the inflationary era and implies, in the limit of
vanishing Planck size, the Hartle-Hawking no-time boundary condition. On the
other hand, string theory give credence to the holographic principle and the
concomitant depletion of states at the Planck scale. The apparent
incompatibility of primordial inflation with holography either invalidates one
of these two notions or relegates the nature of the Planck size outside the
realm of quantum physics, as we know it.
