MIT
How did we come into existence? How did the universe come into existence? These are questions that astrophysicists have pondered and explored for many years.
Now scientists from MIT, Harvard University & the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics have developed a detailed view of how the universe might have evolved after the Big Bang, according to an MIT press release published on Thursday.
They’ve named their new simulation Thesan after the Etruscan goddess of dawn, and it aims to recreate the cosmic reionization period, a mysterious time that has often perplexed astrophysicists.
They’ve named their new simulation Thesan after the Etruscan goddess of dawn, and it aims to recreate the cosmic reionization period, a mysterious time that has often perplexed astrophysicists.
Long standing questions
The simulation will be used to answer long-standing questions about our Universe, such as how far light was able to travel in the early Universe and which galaxies were responsible for reionization.
“Thesan acts as a bridge to the early Universe,” said Aaron Smith, NASA Einstein Fellow at MIT’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. “It should serve as an ideal simulation counterpart for up-coming observation facilities that will fundamentally change our understanding of the cosmos.
The project began with a model of galaxy formation that researchers had previously engineered, called Illustris-TNG, which accurately simulated the properties & populations of evolving galaxies. The teams then developed a new code that would illustrate how light from galaxies & stars interacts with and reionized surrounding gas.
“Thesan follows how light from these first galaxies interacts with gas over the first billion years and transforming the universe from neutral to ionized,” said Rahul Kannan of Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “In this way, we automatically follow the reionization process as it unfolds.
Last but not least, the team incorporated a cosmic dust model.
The most detailed view of cosmic reionization
The end result is a simulation that provides the most detailed view of cosmic reionization in the largest volume of space of any simulation currently in existence. There are many simulation models available today, but they either model over large-distances at low resolution or offer more detailed simulations that do not span-large-volumes.
“We bring these two approaches together: we have large volume & high resolution,” concluded Mark Vogelsberger, associate professor of physics at MIT.
The resulting video simulation is a mesmerizing clip that’s fun to watch even if you’re not an astrophysicist capable of fully understanding it. The study is published in journal Monthly Notice of the Royal Astronomical Society.
