Many processes in astrophysics take a long time, which makes it difficult to study their evolution. For example, a star like our sun is regarding 10 billion years old, and galaxies evolve over billions of years.
One way astrophysicists approach this is to look at different objects to compare them at different stages of development. They can also look at distant objects to effectively look back in time, given the time it takes for light to reach our telescopes. For example, if we look at an object 10 billion light years away, we see it as it was 10 billion years ago.
Now, for the first time, researchers have created simulations that recreate the full life cycle of some of the largest groups of galaxies observed in the distant universe 11 billion years ago, according to a new study published today. June 2, 2022 in review natural astronomy.
Cosmic simulations are essential to studying how the universe formed as it is today, but many of them don’t usually match what astronomers observe through telescopes. Most are designed to match the real universe only in a statistical sense. On the other hand, constrained cosmic simulations are designed to reproduce the structures we actually observe in the universe. However, most current simulations of this type have been applied to our local universe, that is, near Earth, but not to observations of the distant universe.
A team of researchers led by the Kavli Institute for Physics and Mathematics in the Universe Project researcher and first author Metin Ata and associate professor of the project Khe-Jan Lee studied distant structures such as massive galaxy clusters. Present. Galaxy clusters before they clump together under the influence of their own gravity. They found that current studies of remote proto-clusters were sometimes oversimplified, meaning they were conducted using simple models rather than simulations.
Simulation snapshots show (top) the distribution of matter corresponding to the observed distribution of galaxies in a light travel time of 11 billion years (when the universe was only 2.76 billion years old or 20% of its present age), and (bottom) the distribution of matter in the same region following 11 billion years. A billion light years or so. Credit: Ata et al.
“We wanted to try to develop a complete simulation of the distant real universe to see how the structures began and how they ended,” Atta said.
Their result was COSTCO (COsmos Constrained Field Simulation).
He told me that developing a simulation is a lot like building a time machine. Since only light from the distant universe reaches Earth now, the galaxies observed by telescopes today are a snapshot of the past.
“It’s like finding an old black and white photo of your grandfather and making a video of his life,” he said.
In this sense, the researchers took snapshots of “young” ancestral galaxies in the universe and then rapidly advanced their age to study how galaxy clusters formed.
The light from the galaxies the researchers used traveled 11 billion light-years away to reach us.
The hardest part was taking into account the large-scale environment.
“This is something very important for the fate of these structures, whether they are isolated or connected to a larger structure. If you ignore the environment, you’ll get completely different answers. “We have been able to consistently calculate the large-scale environment because we have a full simulation, which is why our prediction is more stable,” Atta said.
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Another important reason the researchers created for this simulation is to test the Standard Model of cosmology, which is used to describe the physics of the universe. By predicting the ultimate mass and distribution of structures in a given space, researchers can unveil previously undiscovered inconsistencies in our current understanding of the universe.
Using their simulations, the researchers were able to find evidence for three previously published protogalactic groups and a single structure disturbance. In addition, they were able to identify five other structures that form regularly in their simulations. This includes the Hyperion proto supercluster, the largest and oldest proto-supercluster known today, which is 5,000 times the mass of our group.[{”attribute=””>MilkyWaygalaxywhichtheresearchersfoundoutitwillcollapseintoalarge300millionlightyearfilament[{”attribute=””>MilkyWaygalaxywhichtheresearchersfoundoutitwillcollapseintoalarge300millionlightyearfilament
Their work is already being applied to other projects including those to study the cosmological environment of galaxies, and absorption lines of distant quasars to name a few.
Details of their study were published in Nature Astronomy on June 2.
Reference: “Predicted future fate of COSMOS galaxy protoclusters over 11 Gyr with constrained simulations” by Metin Ata, Khee-Gan Lee, Claudio Dalla Vecchia, Francisco-Shu Kitaura, Olga Cucciati, Brian C. Lemaux, Daichi Kashino and Thomas Müller, 2 June 2022, Nature Astronomy.
DOI: 10.1038 / s41550-022-01693-0