APOD
Astronomy Picture of the Day
Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.
A Universe in a Box
Explanation: Is this our universe? Possibly. It is one computerized guess of how gas in the universe was distributed billions of years ago, at redshift 3, when the universe was only a quarter of its present age. Using supercomputers at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and assumptions about the composition and beginning of the universe , the GC3 team was able to reconstruct a hypothetical universe . A cube of this universe was cut out and displayed, with each side being about 8 million light years across. Color represents temperature of the hot gas . At the bottom a single slice through this cube is displayed, with helium abundance superposed with a wire mesh. The small structures appearing here give insight into the past and present structure of the intergalactic medium , the matter inhabiting the regions between galaxies and clusters of galaxies .
| Date | August 21, 1997 |
|---|---|
| Credit | Credit: M. Norman (UIUC) et al., Grand Challenge Cosmology Consortium |
| Authors & editors: | Robert Nemiroff (MTU) & Jerry Bonnell (UMCP) |
| A service of: |
ASD at NASA / GSFC, NASA Science Activation & Michigan Tech. U. |