Flamingo project scientists have achieved a notable milestone in astronomy, producing the largest and most comprehensive simulation in universe already done so far.
They traced the evolution of the cosmos over 13.75 billion years using state-of-the-art supercomputers. The results were impressive. Find out more below!
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Led by Joop Schaye, from the Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, the team created a virtual box that represents an extension of 10 billion light years, inserting 300 billion particles, each with about 130 masses solar.
The Flamingo project sought not only to understand the gravitational interaction of dark matter, as is common in simulations of this type, but also considered the impact of baryonic matter, the “normal” non-dark matter that makes up the universe.
This approach is crucial, since baryonic matter can trigger cataclysmic phenomena that affect the surrounding environment, influencing the evolution of galaxies and other cosmic elements.
Furthermore, the simulation took into account the behavior of cosmic neutrinos, particles with a very small mass that have not yet been precisely measured.
This research allows scientists to measure neutrinos and map dark matter, providing essential information about the large-scale components of the cosmos.
To accomplish this feat, the Flamingo project ran 28 simulations, varying parameters such as the amount of matter dark, the mass of neutrinos and the influence of active galactic nuclei powered by supermassive black holes, among others.
The objective now is to compare each result with real observations made by main telescopes of the world to determine which set of properties most closely resembles reality.
This impressive achievement was no simple task. More than 50 million hours, distributed among 30 thousand processors, were needed to complete the simulation.
The DiRAC-COSMA8 supercomputer from Durham University, in the United Kingdom, was essential in this process. The results of this pioneering research were published in three articles in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Overall, the Flamingo project represents a major step forward in understanding the universe, allowing more precise measurements to be obtained to help scientists decipher the secrets of the universe.