"A virtual Universe"; a short video not to be missed. [View all]
Apologies to n2doc if he has already has an OP on the above topic;
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This video is the formal and narrated video showing what the Big Bang looks like from a 12 million years after the event (if there was such one as new theories are postulating) to present day.
They used a 350 million light years across "large enough to be representative of the universe but detailed enough to show great detail" than previous attempts.
The video shows both "the light matter we can see and the dark matter we can't".
The biggest problem was how to produce many differently shaped galaxies for the 40,000 ones depicted.
From the website of the makers of the video, which is pretty much 'a making of...;
"The Illustris project is a large cosmological simulation of galaxy formation, completed in late 2013, using a state of the art numerical code and a comprehensive physical model. Building on several years of effort by members of the collaboration, the Illustris simulation represents an unprecedented combination of high resolution, total volume, and physical fidelity. The About page contains detailed descriptions of the project, for both the general public and researchers in the field.
On this website we present the scientific motivation behind the project, a list of the collaboration members, key results and references, movies and images created from the simulation data, information on upcoming public data access, and tools for interactive data exploration. The short video below is a compilation made from some of the movies available on the Media page."
http://www.illustris-project.org/
I have to say this made my day, well, sort of, but it was a welcome respite after doing yard work all day.