Smithsonian scientists just recreated the first 2 billion years of the Universe

A team of researchers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian has developed a groundbreaking simulation of the early universe, known as 'Lumina.' This simulation recreates the universe's first 2 billion years, offering a detailed look at how dark matter, gas, and radiation interacted to give rise to the earliest stars, galaxies, and black holes. The Lumina simulation is the largest and most detailed of its kind, using powerful computers to calculate the interactions between gas, dark matter, and light as the young universe developed. By following these interactions across the first 2 billion years after the Big Bang, researchers can examine how the earliest galaxies formed and how their activity changed the enormous clouds of gas surrounding them. The simulation models a volume of space more than 100 times larger than those covered by earlier comparable projects, providing a view of cosmic evolution on a scale comparable to the vast regions that today's most advanced telescopes can study. The team used more than 15,000 graphics processing units on Frontier, one of the world's fastest supercomputers, to recreate such an enormous portion of cosmic history. The Lumina simulation provides a powerful new framework for investigating how the universe developed. Researchers plan to use it to explore the movement of gas between galaxies, the influence of radiation left over from the Big Bang, and the emergence of regions where stars formed at especially high rates. By placing these predictions alongside observations from the James Webb Space Telescope, the Nancy Roman Space Telescope, and other instruments, scientists hope to build a more complete picture of the universe's earliest chapters. The creation of the Lumina simulation is a significant achievement in the field of astrophysics, offering a new tool for understanding the evolution of the universe. It has the potential to reveal new insights into the formation of stars, galaxies, and black holes, and may even challenge current theories of cosmic evolution.