Amazing Time-Lapse Video Shows Evolution of Universe Like Never Before (Video, Images)
Scientists have cooked up a new time-lapse simulation of the universe's evolution, a computerized view that shows how the cosmos may have looked over the course of billions of years.
(http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/etLjnw3Gj5tAcLxUMi3R0g--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTU3NTtweW9mZj0wO3E9NzU7dz01NzU-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_US/News/SPACE.com/Amazing_Time-Lapse_Video_Shows_Evolution-112b60ed60c7b2264722b508ea44c16b)
The cosmic simulation models the large-scale changes in the structure of the universe, tracing 13 billion years of evolution starting 12 million years after the Big Bang. The computer model, called Illustris, is special because it covers a wide area — a cosmic cube that is about 350 million light-years on each side — and also focuses on some details that are difficult to calculate while looking at such a wide swath of the universe.
You can watch a video of the simulation on Space.com. The new simulation shows a time-lapse view of the universe moving into its current form in brilliant colors. Galaxies move apart, and explosions take place in the cosmic web of galaxies simulated by the researchers. [See images from the Illustris universe evolution simulation]
(http://l3.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/w4JgnyQ1aA.WSMiwQHDAKw--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTU3NTtweW9mZj0wO3E9NzU7dz01NzU-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_US/News/SPACE.com/Amazing_Time-Lapse_Video_Shows_Evolution-f94f646d5020cfafd4e978175de2975d)
Illustris shows small-scale galactic evolution, and tracks the formation of elliptical and spiral galaxies, said Mark Vogelsberger, a researcher at MIT and the lead author of a new study detailing the simulation.
"One of the main reasons why we did the simulation is because we learned a lot about the physics over the last years, and we think we have a very good understanding of the composition of the universe," Vogelsberger told Space.com. "We think there is dark matter. We think there is dark energy and we think that there are ordinary atoms. We also think we have a pretty good understanding of the initial conditions of the universe because we can measure those with satellites."
While the new simulation doesn't cover the entire universe, Illustris does model a wide-enough part of the universe to be representative of the entire cosmos, Vogelsberger said.
For the simulation, Vogelsberger and his team were able to model the behavior of dark matter and dark energy, the mysterious substances that make up about 95 percent of the universe. They also modeled the way that baryonic matter — matter composed of protons, electrons and neutrons — behaves. The model actually looks very similar to what scientists observe in the actual universe.
The research team used 8,192 computer cores (which have about the same computing power as a desktop) running simultaneously to create the new simulation, which shows the way the distribution of galaxies has changed over time. It would have taken 2,000 years using one ordinary desktop computer to create the new simulation, Vogelsberger said, but it took about six months to create the Illustris simulation on the stable of computer cores.
(http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/PtEOVDf6eOJpn2nVbW28BA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTU3NTtweW9mZj0wO3E9NzU7dz01NzU-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_US/News/SPACE.com/Amazing_Time-Lapse_Video_Shows_Evolution-023f11bf8b27b42688a98439536a8553)
http://news.yahoo.com/amazing-time-lapse-video-shows-evolution-universe-never-171722193.html
What's Next for Cosmology After Landmark Gravitational Wave Discovery?
May be a related article
The oldest light in the universe still has some secrets to share.
(http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/DFNmMPZDvAMvOIhie_UykQ--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTQ0NDtweW9mZj0wO3E9NzU7dz01NzU-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_US/News/SPACE.com/What%27s_Next_for_Cosmology_After-6631bcc1a76dc63ee3e352dcaaf93621)
In March, astronomers announced that the BICEP2 telescope at the South Pole had detected evidence of primordial gravitational waves in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the ancient light that began saturating the universe 380,000 years after the Big Bang.
If it holds up, the discovery confirms the theory of cosmic inflation, which posits that the universe expanded much faster than the speed of light just after the Big Bang, exploding from minuscule quantum fluctuations into something of macroscropic size in a few tiny fractions of a second. [How Inflation Gave the Universe the Ultimate Kickstart (Infographic)]
Several teams of researchers around the world are thus racing to confirm this landmark find, looking for the gravitational-wave signature — a type of polarization in the CMB known as "B-modes" — in data gathered by their own instruments. But other astronomers are already looking ahead, considering what additional information they could prise out of the CMB with new and advanced tools.
And there is indeed still much to learn, astronomers Joseph Silk and Jens Chluba write in a "Perspectives" piece published online today (May 7) in the journal Science.
For example, a super-sensitive space-borne spectrometer could measure temperature variations in the CMB with unprecedented precision. These variations reveal areas of different density, which were the seeds that eventually gave rise to stars, galaxies and all the other cosmic structures seen today.
http://news.yahoo.com/whats-next-cosmology-landmark-gravitational-wave-discovery-183827267.html