What It Looks Like When A Galaxy Is Born

A twisting, rolling cloud of smoke,

1. Ever wonder what NASA uses all those supercomputers for? In part, for running simulations like this:

Video available at: http://youtube.com/watch?v=_Ssc1GsqHds.

From NASA, this simulations “follows the development of a single disk galaxy over about 13.5 billion years, from shortly after the Big Bang to the present time.” That’s about

Old stars are colored red, younger ones are white and blue. Gas is pale blue.