View Astronomy Picture of the Day Archives
May 30, 2016
Galaxy Evolution Tracking Animation
Image Credit & Copyright: Astronomy Picture of the Day -- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Courtesy of http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Galaxy Evolution Tracking Animation
Image Credit & Copyright: Astronomy Picture of the Day -- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
Courtesy of http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html
How did the universe evolve from such a smooth beginning?
To help understand, computational cosmologists and
NASA produced the
featured time-lapse animated video depicting a
computer simulation of part of the universe.
The 100-million light-year
simulation starts about 20 million years after the
Big Bang
and runs until the present.
After a smooth beginning, gravity causes clumps of matter to form into
galaxies which immediately begin falling toward each other.
Soon, many of them condense into long
filaments while others violently merge into a
huge and hot cluster of galaxies.
Investigating of potential universe attributes in
simulations like this have helped shape the engineering design the
James Webb Space Telescope,
currently scheduled for launch in late 2018.
