Re-creating a slice of the universe

Thursday, August 16, 2012 - 12:10 in Astronomy & Space

Scientists at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) and their colleagues at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS) have invented a new computational approach that can accurately follow the birth and evolution of thousands of galaxies over billions of years. For the first time, it’s now possible to build a universe from scratch that brims with galaxies like those we observe around us. “We’ve created the full variety of galaxies we see in the local universe,” said CfA’s Mark Vogelsberger, a postdoctoral fellow in the Harvard College Observatory. Our cosmic neighborhood is littered with majestic spiral galaxies such as the Andromeda, the Pinwheel, and the Whirlpool. Spirals are common, but previous simulations had trouble creating them. Instead, they produced lots of blobby galaxies clumped into balls, without the broad disks and outstretched arms of a typical spiral. The new software, called Arepo, solves this problem. Created by Volker Springel, group...

Read the whole article on Harvard Science

More from Harvard Science

Latest Science Newsletter

Get the latest and most popular science news articles of the week in your Inbox! It's free!

Check out our next project, Biology.Net