Researchers have created what they say is the largest computer simulation of the universe, and have made the data available for anyone to download for

Scientists Create 3,000 TB Simulation of the Universe You Can Download

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2021-09-14 07:30:07

Researchers have created what they say is the largest computer simulation of the universe, and have made the data available for anyone to download for free.

An international team associated with the Center for Computational Astrophysics created the virtual universe using ATERUI II, the world’s most powerful astronomical supercomputer, according to a press release by the organization . Dubbed Uchuu (the Japanese word for “outer space”), the simulation contains a staggering 2.1 trillion particles spanning 9.6 billion virtual light-years. That’s big. Real big.

Scientists believe that Uchuu is the most realistic simulation of the universe yet, modeling its evolution across more than 13 billion years. Specifically, according to Universe Today astrophysicist Brian Koberlein’s analysis, the model is specifically tuned to examine how dark matter behaves as the universe expands .

“Uchuu is like a time machine: we can go forward, backward and stop in time, we can ‘zoom in’ on a single galaxy or ‘zoom out’ to visualize a whole cluster, we can see what is really happening at every instant and in every place of the universe from its earliest days to the present, being an essential tool to study the cosmos,” said Julia F. Ereza, a PhD student at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía in Spain who worked on the research, in the press release.

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