May 30, 2016
The light from the farthest visible stars set out on its journey long before your first birthday.
Galaxy Evolution Tracking Animation
Birthday · May 30, 2016
A little universe, just for you
Your date.
Ready to give.
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APOD published May 30, 2016 · Video still. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
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.