Watch a Simulation of a Galaxy, From the Big Bang Until the Present Day

Since the mid-20th century, scientists have had a pretty good idea of how the Universe came to be. Cosmic expansion and the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) lent credibility to the Big Bang Theory, and the accelerating rate of expansion led to theories about Dark Energy. Still, there is much about the early Universe that scientists still don’t know, which requires that they rely on simulations on cosmic evolution.

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Dead Or Alive – You Spin Me Round – 1984

Tau.Neutrino said:

Watch a Simulation of a Galaxy, From the Big Bang Until the Present Day

Since the mid-20th century, scientists have had a pretty good idea of how the Universe came to be. Cosmic expansion and the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) lent credibility to the Big Bang Theory, and the accelerating rate of expansion led to theories about Dark Energy. Still, there is much about the early Universe that scientists still don’t know, which requires that they rely on simulations on cosmic evolution.

more…

Well, I was about to make some cynical comments, such as “with violent relaxation I assume” and “voxel effects on movie CGI are getting so much better these days”, but I won’t.

This simulation really is fantastic. Real science. It looks totally real to me. I particularly like the galactic outflowing jet along the axis towards the top left at 10 billion years.

I don’t know how the simulation was done, it looks like a combination of two different methods:

• n-body simulation with millions of independent stars
• gas simulations with realistic gas drag
• I’ve no clue which of the two is used for dark matter

Putting the two together, and they end up with something better than I’d expect from any multi-million dollar movie special effects. This is so much better than any other galaxy simulation or cosmology simulation I’ve seen.