Astronomers unveil detailed simulation of early universe using supercomputer
A collaboration between the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and Harvard College Observatory has produced the Lumina simulation, modeling the universe's first two billion years with unprecedented scale and detail.
A team of astronomers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian has released Lumina, a large-scale simulation that traces the evolution of the cosmos from its first two billion years. The model covers a cubic region about 1.5 billion light-years across and follows the formation of dark-matter filaments, gas clouds, galaxies and black holes.
The simulation was run on more than 15,000 graphics processing units of the Frontier supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, allowing a volume over 100 times larger than previous efforts while still resolving individual structures.
"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.
"For the first time, we can follow along as both hydrogen and helium changed into their modern form across such an enormous volume of the universe, while still resolving the galaxies and other luminous objects driving that transformation," he added.
Researchers plan to compare Lumina's outputs with observations from telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope. Consistency would bolster current theories of early cosmic development, while discrepancies could highlight gaps in existing models.
"The early universe has become an exciting new frontier in astrophysics," said Oliver Zier, lead author and computational physicist at the Center for Astrophysics.