To follow the modern view of the origin of heavenly bodies, we must go back to the ancient time where we left the story of the world periods in Chap. 24: at about 400,000 years after the Big Bang, when the universe was filled uniformly by a hydrogen-helium gas at the temperature of 3,000°C. Today, when about 14 billion years have passed, we find that galaxies have formed and we are inside one of them, the Milky Way. Its estimated 200 billion stars and innumerable gas clouds of different sizes orbit around its center. When we look further, we see an enormous expanse of galaxies, more or less like our own stellar system. The hundreds of billions of galaxies in the sky are widely separated in space but belong to just a small number of classes being mainly elliptical and spiral, both of these made mainly of dark matter and a smaller amount of stars and gas. This suggests that the galaxies have their deep roots in just one basic process, occurring everywhere in the universe. How was the smooth and featureless state transformed into the complex system of superclusters, voids, and chains we see today?
Keywords
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
(2009). Origin of Galaxies. In: The Evolving Universe and the Origin of Life. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09534-9_27
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09534-9_27
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-09533-2
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-09534-9
eBook Packages: Physics and AstronomyPhysics and Astronomy (R0)