The point on the model represents the current vantage point looking out on the universe

From Correspondent Rick Lockridge

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A new computer model shows how gravity turned the smooth skin of the early universe into the wrinkly 12-billion-year-old structure seen today.

The model, developed by an international team of scientists and featured in the latest issue of Science, looks like a sword-shaped wedge of green marble.

The broad top of the wedge, representing the very early, 1-billion-year-old universe, contains few "flecks," indicating that matter was distributed fairly uniformly after the Big Bang. This is in line with widely held scientific beliefs.

Scrolling down the wedge, which one scientist describes as just a tiny sliver of the entire model, more flecks are visible, showing how gravity "waves" started to pull the matter together into galaxies and clusters of galaxies.

Toward the bottom of the wedge, where it tapers to a sharp point representing the current vantage point looking out onto the now 12-billion-year-old universe, the wedge is heavily flecked. Scientists say that is the sign of a very wrinkled and mature universe, with the effects of gravity written everywhere on its luminous face.

Programmers needed a full year to write the computer simulation, and it took 70 hours of nonstop computer time on a Cray supercomputer with 512 processors working simultaneously to complete the calculations.