![]() The universe has not expanded from any one spot since the Big Bang - rather, space itself has been stretching, and carrying matter with it. Instead, it is better to think of the Big Bang as the simultaneous appearance of space everywhere in the universe. The universe did not expand into space, as space did not exist before the universe, according to NASA. The Big Bang did not occur as an explosion in the usual way one think about such things, despite one might gather from its name. (Image credit: NASA/Francesco Ferraro/Bologna Observatory) With an estimated age of 13.5 billion years, it is likely among the first objects of the Galaxy to form after the Big Bang. The globular cluster NGC 6397 contains around 400,000 stars and is located about 7,200 light years away in the southern constellation Ara. During this time, which lasted more than a half-billion years, clumps of gas collapsed enough to form the first stars and galaxies, whose energetic ultraviolet light ionized and destroyed most of the neutral hydrogen.Īlthough the expansion of the universe gradually slowed down as the matter in the universe pulled on itself via gravity, about 5 or 6 billion years after the Big Bang, according to NASA, a mysterious force now called dark energy began speeding up the expansion of the universe again, a phenomenon that continues today.Ī little after 9 billion years after the Big Bang, our solar system was born. ![]() However, after this point, the universe was plunged into darkness, since no stars or any other bright objects had formed yet.Ībout 400 million years after the Big Bang, the universe began to emerge from the cosmic dark ages during the epoch of reionization. This set loose the initial flash of light created during the Big Bang, which is detectable today as cosmic microwave background radiation. Roughly 380,000 years after the Big Bang, matter cooled enough for atoms to form during the era of recombination, resulting in a transparent, electrically neutral gas, according to NASA. Was there a bang at the end of the universe? Geocentric model: The Earth-centered view of the universeĭark stars: The first stars in the universe What is the coldest place in the universe?
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