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The beginning of the universe

V Representation of the evolution of the universe over 13.77 billion years. The far left shows the earliest moment we can study today, when a period of "inflation" created a burst of exponential growth in the universe. (The size is shown by the vertical proportion of the grid in this drawing). Over the next billion years the expansion of the universe gradually slowed down as the matter in the universe was pulled towards itself by gravity. Recently the expansion began to accelerate again as the repulsive effects of dark energy became dominant in the expansion of the universe. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

The Uneven Universe: The Expansion of the Universe and Einstein's Theory of General Relativity

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Cosmological calculations almost always assume that there is a uniform distribution of matter in the universe. This is because the calculations would be too complicated if they included the location of each and every star. In reality the universe is not uniform: there are places with stars and planets, and in other places there is only empty space.
The expansion of the universe over time. NASA/WMAP Science Team / Graphics: Dana Berry

Measuring the Universe's Expansion: Surprising Discrepancies Hint at Inconsistencies in the Universe's Composition

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Researchers at the Cosmic Dawn Center at the University of Copenhagen have found that the velocity measurements used to determine the expansion rate of the universe may not be reliable. As stated in the publication, this does not resolve the inconsistency, but rather hints at another inconsistency in the composition of the universe

The early universe was liquid

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This image shows the galaxy cluster MACS J1149.5 + 2223 taken by the NASA / ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The image in the magnifying square is the distant galaxy MACS1149-JD1, as seen 13.3 billion years ago and recently observed by Alma. The oxygen concentration discovered by 'Alma' is depicted in red. Photo: ESO

Evidence of stars formed only 250 million s after the big bang

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Imaging of the quasar J1342+0928, the active galactic halo that contains at its center a supermassive black hole, with a mass 800 million times that of our Sun, that is gobbling up a lot of material from a hot disk surrounding it. Source: Robin Dienel/Carnegie Institution for Science.

The most distant supermassive black hole to date has been discovered

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A diagram of the evolution and expansion of the universe, with cosmic inflation visible at its very beginning. Is the theory of cosmic inflation, which tries to explain the properties of our universe, wrong? Source: r NASA/WMAP Science Team.

Cosmic controversy

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Simulation of the merger of two black holes, the existence of which was indicated by the gravitational waves recorded by LIGO in 2017. Source: The SXS (Simulating eXtreme Spacetimes) Project.

Is dark matter made of black holes?

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A diagram of the evolution and expansion of the universe, with cosmic inflation visible at its very beginning. Is the theory of cosmic inflation, which tries to explain the properties of our universe, wrong? Source: r NASA/WMAP Science Team.

The theory of cosmic inflation is in trouble

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The galaxy EGS8p7 as seen from the Hubble Space Telescope (the large image and the image on the upper right, and by the Spitzer Space Telescope) lower right in infrared. I. Labbe, (Leiden University), NASA/ESA/JPL-Caltech

The most distant and therefore also the oldest galaxy so far has been discovered

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Three Methuselah stars have been discovered that formed in the universe shortly after the Big Bang

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In this photograph from the Hubble Space Telescope, you see dark knots of gas and dust called "Bok globules" - compressed pockets in larger molecular clouds. Such islands of matter in the early universe may have contained water vapor as we see in our galaxy today, although they contained much less oxygen. Photo: Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team

Surprising discovery: the ancient gas clouds, from which the stars and galaxies in the universe were formed, contained a significant amount of water

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Computer simulation of multiple universes. Screenshot from a video by the Premier Institute in Canada

Is the universe a bubble? – Scientists have proposed a way to test this

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suds. Illustration: shutterstock

Genesis was empty - how was our universe created? - The fifth and last part

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In this image you see real photographs of the cosmic background radiation as it is measured in the sky (right side). Above you see the cosmic radiation as it was first detected in 1965, the image is colored and the colors indicate the temperature (or frequency) of the radiation. Notice how uniform it is in temperature (there is only one green color). Middle image - in 1992 the Kobe satellite finds tiny differences in temperature (six digits after the decimal point). In the lower image you see a similar image with better spatial resolution taken in 2003. The red band in the middle is not related to the cosmic background radiation, it is micro radiation emitted from the plane of our galaxy

Genesis was empty - how was our universe created? - Part IV

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Wilson (left) and Penzias (right) against the background of the shofar antenna they used when discovering the cosmic background radiation. Source: Wikipedia

Genesis was empty - how was our universe created? - Part III

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An approximate model of the hydrogen atom, the simplest and most common atom in the universe consisting of a proton in the center and an electron around it. All the hydrogen in the universe was created about 380,000 years after the big bang.

Genesis was empty - how was our universe created? - Part II'

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the expanding universe. Illustration: from Wikipedia

Genesis was empty - how was our universe created? - Part a'

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Mark Kamionkowski. From his home page on the Johns Hopkins University website

"We received an important message from the first fractions of a second of the universe after the Big Bang"

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In the yellow circle you see a normal form of polarization (E-mode) and in the blue circle you see the form of polarization and the size of the polarization that must have created only gravitational waves during inflation. You can see the same special polarization in the background radiation in the top image as well. The black lines mark the direction and polarization of the radiation. Once the team measured this polarization shape they were able to confirm both the gravitational waves and the inflation phase. In the bottom picture you see a drawing starting on the left side where the big bang happened and immediately after it the inflation (the yellow part). After the end of inflation the universe expands much more slowly (the black part) until the present day. Today we measure the cosmic background radiation that came out when the universe was 380,000 years old and pass it through polarizers to measure the polarization of the radiation (the blue part). Image: Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

First direct evidence of the existence of gravitational waves that caused the universe to swell immediately after the big bang

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The formation of the universe and the theory of information. Illustration: shutterstock

How was the universe created from nothing?

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Much larger than the Milky Way, and produces stars at a tremendous rate. Imaging of galaxy z8_GND_5296, courtesy of STScI/NASA

Higher, farther, earlier - scientists discovered a galaxy from the beginning of the universe

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A radio telescope image of galaxy 4C12.50 which is about 1.5 billion light years from Earth. The diagram shows the location details at the edge of a fast jet of particles, where the huge cloud of gas (in yellow-orange colors) is pushed by the jet. Figure: Morganti et al., NRAO/AUI/NSF)

Massive black holes limit the growth of galaxies

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The sky in the microwave field, as photographed by the European Space Agency's Planck Space Telescope. These speckled structures of the cosmic background radiation, the oldest light in the universe, are visible at high latitudes on the map. The strip in the center is the plane of our galaxy - the Milky Way. Photo: European Space Agency.

Is a large concentration of dark energy at the beginning of the universe responsible for accelerating the expansion of the universe that began 7 billion years ago and is felt today?

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Some of the green pea galaxies. Illustration: Anne Jaskot, University of Michigan

The green pea galaxies could help astronomers understand the early universe

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This map shows the ancient light in our universe, as it was discovered with the greatest precision yet by the Planck mission. Photo: European Space Agency and the Planck Partnership. Video

The universe is 100 million years older than we thought until now

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