FOOTBALLBUTCHRI

What Was It Like When The Universe Made The Very First Galaxies?

“The first galaxies required a large number of steps to happen first: they needed stars and star clusters to form, and they needed for gravity to bring these star clusters together into larger clumps. But once you make them, they are now the largest structures, and can continue to grow, attracting not only star clusters and gas, but additional small galaxies. The cosmic web has taken its first major step up, and will continue to grow further, and more complex, over the hundreds of millions and billions of years to follow.”

For millions upon millions of years, there were no stars in the Universe. As the first one finally formed, the star clusters that birthed them became the largest structures in the Universe. Yet these were too small and limited to be considered galaxies. For that, we need more than one massive star cluster in the same place. We need for them to merge, triggering a starburst and creating a larger, more luminous object. It takes much longer for that to happen than to merely form stars, and the Universe was a very different place by then. The Big Bang may have started everything off uniformly and without anything more than the seeds of structure, but gravity, and time, are awfully powerful tools.