"In the beginning, the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry, and has been widely regarded as a bad idea."
(Douglas Adams)
Here is a cosmological simulation showing the evolution of galaxies from very early times to the present day. Galaxies start out very small in the universe and then progressively merge to form larger and larger systems. Time is demarcated in the simulation as the cosmic redshift "z." Redshift 30 ("z=30") corresponds to a period roughly 100 million years after the Big Bang, while lower redshifts correspond to later times ("z=0" corresponds to the present day).
Credit: Andrey Kravtsov / University of Chicago
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