Researchers simulate the formation of Universe

Researchers have simulated the formulation of an entire virtual Universe with the help of a massive supercomputer. Two trillion digital particles gave rise to a catalogue of approximately 25 billion virtual galaxies.

Researchers are making use of the catalogue of virtual galaxies in order to regulate experiments on board the Euclid satellite, which is supposed to launch in the year 2020 aiming to investigate the nature of dark energy and dark matter in the Universe, factors that make up almost 95% of the Universe.

Researchers at the University of Zurich took three years for completing the simulation. With exceptional accuracy, the researchers constructed and optimized a code for explaining the dynamics of dark matter and the development of large-scale structures present in the Universe.

According to stats provided by Daily Mail, the Universe is 95% ‘dark’ while the rest 5% of the Universe comprises of materials known to all like atoms and subatomic particles. 23% of the ‘dark’ portion of the universe comprises of dark matter which cannot be seen directly through telescopes, yet astronomers believe that it is out there due to the gravitational effects it has on the matter visible to us.

The remaining 72% of ‘dark’ Universe contains dark energy – a form of energy not known but is believed to fill all of space and also inclined to expand the Universe.

The researchers devised the code to optimally make use of the accessible memory and the processing power of modern supercomputer like Swiss National Computing Center’s (CSCS) ‘Piz Daint’ supercomputer. The code was then processed on the computer for about 80 hours, formulating a virtual Universe of two billion macro-particles which symbolized the dark matter fluid from which the catalogue of 25 billion virtual galaxies was extracted.

The calculations made by the researchers which featured the dark matter fluid under its own gravity, further simulated the creation of minute concentration of matter dubbed as dark matter halos. It is believed by the researchers that various galaxies like the Milky Way were developed in these halos.

The researchers informed that the challenge of this simulation was to model galaxies that are in volume as large as our current observable Universe, as small as one tenth of the Milky Way. The co-author of the study Dr. Romain Teyssier said, “The nature of dark energy remains one of the main unsolved puzzles in modern science.”

Through this simulated galaxy, Euclid satellite’s observational approach will be optimized that in turn would lessen sources of error before it goes on board. The Euclid data will be used for gaining new information regarding dark energy and new discoveries in physics like a modified version of general relativity, as informed by Phys.org.