Researchers have discovered what they describe as the “largest and most accurate computer simulation to date” of our “path” through the universe.
Scientists have created simulations, from the Big Bang to the present day, using a supercomputer to recreate the entire evolution of the universe.
Using advanced statistical techniques, simulations have been adapted to replicate the exact part of the universe, thus containing existing structures in the vicinity of our galaxy that astronomers have observed for decades.
This means that familiar structures within our local universe, such as galaxy clusters, the Virgin, and the Great Wall, were replicated in the simulation.
At the center of the simulation are a pair of galaxies – the hypothetical counterparts of our own Milky Way and Andromeda.
During their research, the scientists discovered that our local patch of universe may be unusual in that simulations predicted fewer galaxies than those in an intermediate region of the universe due to the lower density of dark matter. The localized on a large scale.
Although the level of this decrease in density is not considered a challenge to the Standard Model of cosmology, it might have consequences for how we interpret information from observed galaxy surveys.
Simulation is called Sibelius DarkIt’s part of a project Simulation beyond the local universe (Sibilius).
It covers an area of 600 million light years from Earth and is represented by more than 130 billion simulated particles, requires several thousand computers to operate for several weeks and produces more than a petabyte of data.
Simulation was performed on آلة DiRAC COSmology (Cosma) is administered by the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University.
Researchers from around the world participated in the research, including from Durham University, and it was led by the University of Helsinki.
The results have been published on the website arXiv.org and in preprints in the Monthly Notices of the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Professor Carlos Frink, Professor Ogden From Fundamental Physics at the Institute for Computational Cosmology at Durham University: “It is very exciting to see the familiar structures we know around us emerging from computer computations. Simulations simply reveal the results of the laws of physics operating on dark matter and cosmic gas for the 13.7 billion years that have formed the universe around them. The fact that we were able to replicate these familiar structures provides impressive support for the model. cold dark matter This tells us that we are on the right track to understanding the evolution of the entire universe.”
“By simulating our world, as we see it, we come closer to understanding the nature of our universe,” said Dr. Stuart McAlpine, a former doctoral student at Durham and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki. He explains that the current main theory of cosmology, a model that “cold dark matter can produce all the galaxies we see in our home, is a key criterion for the success of simulations of this kind.” This project provides an important bridge between decades of astronomical theory and observations.”
