Wonders of the Universe

THE BIRTH OF THE UNIVERSE

Every second, light from the beginning of time is raining down on Earth’s surface in a ceaseless torrent. Only a fraction of the light present in the Universe is visible to the naked eye, though; if we could see all of it, the sky would be ablaze with this primordial light both day and night. However, some of this hidden light is not quite a featureless glow; the long wavelength universal glow known as the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) in fact displays minute variations in its wavelength. The CMB carries with it an image of our universe as it was just after its birth, and this discovery has provided key evidence that the beginning really did start with the Big Bang.

It was at the Big Bang that all of spacetime came into existence. The stars and galaxies stretched away across an infinite universe and many are still to be found today. Space is stretching still; housing the old galaxies alongside numerous new star-forming regions, such as NGC 281 k.

NASA