Scientists Create The Most Detailed Simulation Of Our Universe Ever

Teams of scientists from MIT, Harvard and many other great institutions have created what is now the best simulation of the universe ever created, it’s not perfect, but it’s a big step towards understanding the cosmos and our place within it. Using a vast network of supercomputers they created a “universe in a cube” simulation, while that might sound like a silly little box, it actually measured almost 350 million light years across, which should give you some indication of the sheer scale of this simulation.

The scale may not be as big as the universe, in fact it’s freaking tiny compared to the scale of the visible universe, but it’s more than enough to give us a good indication of how things work on a large scale. Not only can the team simulate such a vast area, but they can also “zoom in” on their work to check individual galaxies to a scale of 1000 light years across.

With over 100,000 lines of code simulating the laws of physics, our knowledge on ordinary matter, dark matter, dark energy and more. They then plugged in the spec for an early universe and hit the fast forward button until the simulation was 13 billion years old. You think it’s bad trying to render 1080p video, just imagine how much computer power this must have taken! I’m told my own high-end desktop would have taken many thousands of years to get through such a task.

In the video below is the actual simulation running, the formation of virtual galaxies around dark matter, black holes doing their thing and more. In total the simulation turned up 41,416 galaxies and this is the first simulation that successfully produced its own spiral galaxies like our own Milky Way.