Astronomers Simulate the Birth of the Universe, Here’s How to Model it

The first light spread through the darkness in a period called the age of reionization

REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA – An international collaboration of astronomers has created the most detailed simulation of the early stages of the universe. The simulation can be seen in the video uploaded by Thesan Simulations entitled “Internal 3D view of the gas density evolution in Thesan-1.” Simulations are also published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

The uploaded video shows the first light spreading through darkness in a period called the reionization age, about 13 billion years ago. This is the period when hydrogen atoms are ionized and allow light to spread throughout universe the earliest galaxies to form.

According to scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard University, and the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, this period is chaotic and difficult to model.

“Most astronomers don’t have a laboratory to conduct experiments. The scale of space and time is so large that the only way we can conduct experiments is on computers. We can take basic physics equations and set up theoretical models to simulate what happened in the early universe,” said Astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard and Author Rahul Kannan in a statement. DigitalTrends, Monday (28/3/2022).

The research team created the most detailed simulation of the formation of the universe to date, covering an area of ​​300 million light-years and running through the first billion years after the Big Bang.

Because this happened so long ago, it is very difficult to observe evidence from this period. However, new telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will be able to see galaxies very far away. They hope the newer telescope can collect data that can be compared with their simulations.

“Many telescopes online, such as JWST, are specially designed to study this age. That’s where our simulations come in and they’ll help us interpret real observations from this period and understand what we’re seeing.”

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