Seeing the Birth of the Universe
"A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." The familiar opening words to each Star Wars film have sparked the imaginations of armchair explorers and astronomers alike for many years. But now—using the latest in NASA computer technology—scientists have given us the ability to virtually travel back in time and space to visualize what the birth and evolution of our own universe might really have looked like.
NASA scientific visualization experts and top astrophysicists have produced compelling images and simulations to take viewers to the outermost edges of the universe, billions of light years away, to help solve one of astronomy's key challenges: explaining how the cosmological structures in today's universe formed.
Final timestep (z = 0) of the Bolshoi Simulation (cosmological ΛCDM simulation using 8 billion particles with WMAP5 parameters in a volume 250 h-1 MCPc on a side), showing a slice 10 h-1 Mpc thick by 250 h-1 Mpc square.
Using the space agency's most powerful computers at Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., scientists at the University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) and New Mexico State University (NMSU) in Las Cruces, NM, are running extremely realistic and accurate simulations of the mergers of gas-rich disk galaxies to test new theories regarding dark matter and the formation and distribution of galaxies.
Collaborating with the NAS visualization group, and having access to the Pleiades supercomputer, has been essential to imaging and interpreting the results of our simulations," said Primack. The UCSC researchers' theories will help interpret observations gathered from instruments such as NASA's Hubble, Chandra, and Spitzer space telescopes. The team has also created an analytical model that correctly predicts properties of the elliptical galaxies created in galaxy mergers to calculate the entire evolving population of early galaxies.
Working within the Lambda-Cold Dark Matter (LCMD) cosmology model—a refinement of the big bang theory and the simplest known model that is in general agreement with observed phenomena—the UCSC team is providing the main theoretical support for NASA's Deep Extragalactic Evolutionary Probe (DEEP) and All-wavelength Extended Groth Strip International Survey (AEGIS), which incorporate extensive data from NASA's space observatories. Their work will also be used to help design future missions, such as the James Webb Space Telescope and Joint Dark Energy Mission.
It's been an exciting challenge to develop visualization approaches, software, and products for these data—and a privilege to see the results of the most ambitious cosmology simulation run on Pleiades to date," said Chris Henze, NAS visualization group lead. Known as the "Bolshoi" simulation, the code models the gravity-driven distribution of dark matter in a 1-billion light year cube with 8.5 billion particles, and will be the basis for much new research, according to Henze. The code ran on Pleiades for 18 days, consumed six million processor-hours, and generated 75 terabytes of data.
Primack is also excited about the educational aspects of his work. "Over the past decade, we as a society have come to realize that the origin of our universe is the beginning of our human story," he said. "Getting students to think about their place in the universe will challenge them to develop a sense of why we matter, and how we can make a difference in our own future."
More information:
+ High-Resolution Simulations of Galaxy and Cosmological Structure Formation (PDF-552 KB)
Contact information:
Chris Henze
Scientific Visualization Group lead
NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division
Office: 650-604-3959
Christopher.E.Henze@nasa.gov
Joel Primack
Professor of Physics
University of California
Office: 831-459-2580
joel@scipp.ucsc.edu
