This Supercomputer Is Generating Millions of Universes
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This Supercomputer Is Generating Millions of Universes
How does one study the formation of a galaxy? Or the formation of the oldest thing known to exist, the universe? There are many ways, including powerful telescopes both on land and in space. But Peter Behroozi, an assistant professor at the University of Arizona Steward Observatory, and his team, came up with a different method: generating millions of different universes on a supercomputer.
Examining all the generated universes together, Behroozi's team hoped, would show the likelihood of different physical theories of universal and galactic formation. The team wanted to specifically focus on the role that mysterious dark matter plays in galaxy formation, as well as how galaxies evolve over time and how they give birth to stars.
"On the computer, we can create many different universes and compare them to the actual one, and that lets us infer which rules lead to the one we see," said Behroozi, the study's lead author, in a press statement.
The virtual universes, each known as an "Ex Machina," feature a system that would put any open-world video game to shame. They contain 12 million galaxies and start 400 million years after the Big Bang, evolving all to the present day.
The tests challenged commonly held ideas on the formation of galaxies.
[...] "We took the past 20 years of astronomical observations and compared them to the millions of mock universes we generated," Behroozi explained. "We pieced together thousands of pieces of information to see which ones matched. Did the universe we created look right? If not, we'd go back and make modifications, and check again."
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