Astronomers unveil detailed simulation of universe's first two billion years
The Lumina model, created by the Center for Astrophysics using a supercomputer, visualizes the early formation of galaxies and black holes and will be compared with observations from the James Webb Space Telescope.
Astronomers have released the Lumina simulation, the most detailed model to date of the universe’s first two billion years after the Big Bang. Developed by the Center for Astrophysics in partnership with the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and Harvard College Observatory, the simulation begins with a cubic region 1.5 billion light-years on a side, representing the cosmos at about 1.5 billion years old and filled with dark-matter filaments and luminous gas.
The project employed more than 15,000 graphics processing units on the Frontier supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, allowing researchers to model a volume over 100 times larger than previous efforts while still resolving individual galaxies and black holes. The results provide a visual framework for testing theoretical predictions against data from the James Webb Space Telescope and other observatories.
"We feel incredibly fortunate to be building simulations like Lumina," said Dr. Aaron Smith, a physicist at the University of Texas at Dallas and co-author of the study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
"The early universe has become an exciting new frontier in astrophysics," said Oliver Zier, computational physicist at the Center for Astrophysics and lead author of the paper.
The team hopes the simulation will help translate observational findings into detailed theoretical predictions, refining our understanding of cosmic evolution.