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NASA Sees Glow of Universe's First Objects
Damek writes with news from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which has captured light from what may have been the first glowing objects in the universe, light generated 14 billion years ago. From the article: "'We are pushing our telescopes to the limit and are tantalizingly close to getting a clear picture of the very first collections of objects,' said Dr. Alexander Kashlinsky... 'Whatever these objects are, they are intrinsically incredibly bright and very different from anything in existence today.' Astronomers believe the objects are either the first stars — humongous stars more than 1,000 times the mass of our sun — or voracious black holes that are consuming gas and spilling out tons of energy. If the objects are stars, then the observed clusters might be the first mini-galaxies..."
The expansion of space itself is not constrained by the speed of light, only the matter/energy within it.
Read Inflation for Beginners which is an excellent, relatively (argh) non-technical treatment of the subject.
Relevant quote: "One of the peculiarities of inflation is that it seems to take place faster than the speed of light. Even light takes 30 billionths of a second (3 x 10(exp-10) sec) to cross a single centimetre, and yet inflation expands the Universe from a size much smaller than a proton to 10 cm across in only 15 x 10(exp-33) sec. This is possible because it is spacetime itself that is expanding, carrying matter along for the ride; nothing is moving through spacetime faster than light, either during inflation or ever since. Indeed, it is just because the expansion takes place so quickly that matter has no time to move while it is going on and the process "freezes in" the original uniformity of the primordial quantum bubble that became our Universe."
I don't know what you mean by "information coming from apparently nowhere."
snarkth