Our conception of the universe as we now know it has changed as the technology for its study has improved. From the earliest part of the twentieth century when Edwin Hubble led the way to the concept of the ‘Big Bang’ universe to where we are today.

Considerable effort has been expended in the task of understanding the dynamics of the universe; For there are some ten billion[or so]years of evolution involved. Considerations for brightness as well as Doppler shift, are used to make determinations of age. Such a timeline of universal history is ordered according to redshift[identified by the letter Z]; The larger this value, the earlier the epoch of the universe.

Thus, such measurements have been assessed for thousands of faint galaxies, many of which seem to have had quite relatively quiescent[quiet or inactive]pasts. Even in the earliest epoch of the universe there seem to be as many of them as there are today. It is therefore concluded that many of these galaxies have remained largely the same for billions of years.

Beyond this region, however, we encounter a different picture. The color shift of these[heavily leaning to the blue spectrum] indicates they formed stars rapidly, and many of these have irregular, convoluted morphologies suggestive of prior mergence as well as considerable interactivity.

Such galaxies appear to have been far more prevalent in the earlier universe, and observations made suggest that while stellar formation was high in the early universe, it has declined significantly during the latter half of its history.

Theories have been put forth as to how this could occur.

The first: That, as a result of the galaxies being closer together during the early universe, interactions were the common place and so were stellar formations.

The second: That, perhaps, the galaxies in the ‘early’ universe exhausted their gas supplies at a much faster rate, fading away to the near invisibility that we detect today.

Radio waves emitted from elliptical galaxies[which are thought to be one of the oldest form of galaxy in the known universe]have been found to alter their very appearance and may even effect the evolution of other galaxies. It is this possibility that fuels another debate concerning the Hubble Constant[see earlier OSR 9508.11], suggesting that the age of the universe is far less than was presupposed.

In the search for these primal galaxies, theories as to their origin evolve as do the galaxies themselves. One theory suggests that these young galaxies should form out of clouds comprised of elemental hydrogen[on the consideration that it is the most abundant element in the ‘currently known’ universe]into which hot blue stars are formed, live out their lives, and in the process of dying, change the elemental building blocks for further generations of stellar bodies.

The evolution of galaxies as the universe aged[with the caveat of being either a elliptical or spiral]splintered off with the elliptical ones forming more rapidly, and more numerous; While the spiral formed and evolved more slowly, appearing less regularly as one peers further back towards the beginning of the universe. Such is the same with star formation, which was rapid, some twelve billion years ago, but dropped off sharply around nine billion years ago.

Through computer modeling and various other techniques, including upgrading of land and space based telescopes, placing of observation platforms on the dark sides of planetary satellites, work will continue into the questions of how the universe and its contents were formed; As well as just how old is the universe really?