The universe was plunged into darkness until a sudden explosion spread light throughout the universe which eventually gave birth to stars, planets, and even galaxies. While this theory is limited on paper, a team of experts from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Harvard University created a simulation that describes the propagation of light after the Big Bang. The simulation, packaged in a one-minute video, shows particles of light like fireflies shining through the universe about 14 billion years ago.
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Simulation calculations exceed 30 million CPU hours: MIT
The simulation, developed under the ThyssenKore project, describes an event called the “reionization era” that marks the end of darkness as light from the explosion travels to the farthest corners of the universe. According to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Thesan simulation was created using the SuperMUC-NG engine, which is one of the largest supercomputers in the world. The supercomputer performed the equivalent of more than 30 million CPU hours to create the simulation, something that would take 3,500 years to run on a single desktop, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Describing it as a “cosmic bridge,” the experts noted that initial simulations described conditions some 400,000 years after the Big Bang. These conditions then evolve forward in time to simulate swaths of the universe. Explaining the simulation, Rahul Kenan, author of the paper and astrophysicist at Harvard University’s Center for Astrophysics, said, “Theisan tracks how light from the first galaxy interacted with gas during the first billion years and turned the universe from neutral to ionized. This way, We automatically follow the reionization process when it opens.”
Interestingly, Canaan revealed that light did not travel very long distances in the early universe, according to Thysan. “Actually this distance is very small, and only becomes large at the end of reionization, increasing 10-fold in just a few hundred million years,” he added. Thysan “aims to be the ideal simulation partner for future observational facilities, poised to fundamentally change our understanding of the universe,” said another expert, Aaron Smith, NASA Einstein Fellow at MIT’s Kavli Institute.
Photo: NASA
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