Einstein’s full theory of general relativity has been used to precisely model the universe’s evolution for the first time – and to expose its lumpy early years.
Independent teams from the US and Europe found regions of matter "clumped" together to start forming the first galaxies much earlier than thought. This could help explain the origin of the large-scale structure of the universe.
“By assuming less, we’re seeing something new,” says John Giblin, a physicist at Kenyon College, Ohio and part of the US team.
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation is a snapshot of the universe as it was just a few hundred thousand years after the Big Bang. It shows an incredibly homogeneous tapestry – as if the universe were one indistinct cloud of gas.
Yet now, 13.7 billion years later, the universe is composed of an intricate architecture: millions of stars congregate in galaxies, galaxies gang together in clusters and these clusters form superclusters that stretch across billions of light-years in filaments and sheets.
How the universe evolved from a homogeneous fog is one of the great unsolved mysteries of cosmology.
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