what are the down arrows mean? They are on the right hand side on the library list.

Could you post a screenshot of the "downward" arrow you are seeing?

In Aperture I only know about upward arrows, like these:

Downarrows I am only seeing in my iTunes Library, not in Aperture:

I'm a bit confused by your story too. 😕

I choose start a new Album and directed it to Pictures folder and for everything to be referenced to stay in my original place.

Trying to understand what happened:

When you say, you tried to start a new album - did you use aperture's "Import" pane, to select your "Pictures" folder to import your image files as referenced?

If did OK, but at the end, it picked up a lot of stuff not in Pictures , like a folder full of duplicats that I was going to throw away and the list goes on and on and none will open and they all have a circle with a arrow pointing downward.

Can you post a screenshot of the arrows with a circle?

If I delete all the unwanted stuff like that, from the album, will it delete the original file since everything is referenced and not copied?

When you delete referenced images, you can opt to delete only the versions and not the originals.

I suspect the "down arrows" where there to indicate that the Project was created but the import of the items in that Project had not started yet.

Since you seem to have imported a rather expansive branch of your file tree, it may have taken a long time to finish the import.