Scientists are designing a ‘time machine’ simulation that studies the life cycles of the ancestor of the galaxy city.
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Many processes in astrophysics take a very long time, which makes studying their evolution difficult. For example, stars like our sun are about 10 billion years old and galaxies evolve over billions of years.
One way astrophysicists approach this is by looking at different objects to compare them at different stages of development. They can also see distant objects to look back effectively, due to the length of time it takes light to reach our telescopes. For example, if we look at an object that is 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 cycles of some of the largest galaxy clusters observed in the distant universe 11 billion years ago, according to a new study published June 2, 2022 in the journal. natural astronomy.
Cosmic simulations are essential for studying how the universe came to be as it is today, but many of them usually don’t match what astronomers observe through telescopes. Most are designed to match the real universe only in a statistical sense. On the other hand, finite cosmic simulations are designed to reproduce the structures we actually observe in the universe. However, most simulations of this type have now been applied to our local, near-Earth universe, but not to observations of the distant universe.
A research team, led by Kavli Institute of Physics and Mathematics researchers from Project Universe and first author Metin Ata and project associate professor Khe-Jan Lee, was interested in distant structures such as massive galaxy clusters, which are the ancestors of today. Clusters of galaxies before them gather under the influence of gravity. They found that current studies of distant protoclusters are sometimes oversimplified, meaning they are carried out using simple models rather than simulations.
A screenshot from the simulation shows (above) the distribution of matter that corresponds to the distribution of galaxies observed in light’s 11 billion-year travel time (when the universe was only 2.76 billion years old or 20% of its current age), and (bottom) the distribution of matter. in the same region after 11 billion years. About a billion light years away. Credit: Ata et al.
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“We wanted to try to develop complete simulations of the real, distant universe to see how the structures started and how they ended,” said Atta.
The result is COSTCO (Cosmos Constrained Field Simulation).
He told me that developing a simulation is very similar to building a time machine. Since light from a distant universe only reaches Earth now, the galactic telescopes you see today are portraits of the past.
“It’s like finding an old black and white photo of your grandfather and making a video of his life,” he says.
In this case, the researchers took snapshots of “young” ancestral galaxies in the universe and then rapidly increased their ages to study how galaxy clusters formed.
The light from the galaxy the researchers used traveled 11 billion light years to reach us.
The biggest challenge is considering the large-scale environment.
“It is a matter of great importance to the fate of these structures whether they are isolated or linked to larger structures. If you don’t take the environment into account, you’ll get a completely different answer. We’ve been able to take large-scale environments into account constantly, because we have a full simulation, and that’s why our predictions are more stable.”
Another important reason why researchers created these simulations is to test the Standard Model of cosmology, which is used to describe the physics of the universe. By predicting the final mass and final distribution of structures at a given location, researchers can uncover previously undiscovered inconsistencies in our current understanding of the universe.
Using their simulations, the researchers were able to find evidence that three groups of protogalaxies already existed, and one structure was disturbed. Furthermore, they were able to identify five other structures that were constantly forming in their simulations. This includes the Hyperion proto-supercluster, the largest and oldest known proto-supercluster today that has a mass 5,000 times the mass of our cluster.[{”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
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