Properties of galaxies reproduced by a hydrodynamic simulation

[Ufostrahlen]

Here we report a simulation that starts 12 million years after the Big Bang, and traces 13 billion years of cosmic evolution with 12 billion resolution elements in a cube of 106.5 megaparsecs a side. It yields a reasonable population of ellipticals and spirals, reproduces the observed distribution of galaxies in clusters and characteristics of hydrogen on large scales, and at the same time matches the ‘metal’ and hydrogen content of galaxies on small scales.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v509/n7499/full/nature13316.html

[YOUTUBE]

Full HD videos here:

Illustris - Media

The Illustris cosmological simulation project. Towards a predictive theory of galaxy formation and evolution with hydrodynamical simulations of large cosmological volumes on a moving mesh.

www.illustris-project.org

Acknowledgements:

The Illustris simulation was run on the CURIE supercomputer at CEA/France as part of PRACE project RA0844, and the SuperMUC computer at the Leibniz Computing Centre, Germany, as part of project pr85je. Further simulations were run on the Harvard Odyssey and CfA/ITC clusters, the Ranger and Stampede supercomputers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center through XSEDE, and the Kraken supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory through XSEDE.

 

[datdmt]

just wait till we can unleash a quantum computer on the simulation.

 

[FloorFan]

was just going to post this and went to check if it already had been. I love the line towards the end about what we don't know yet if the models differ from real observation.