Raúl Angulo/Francisco Maion (DIPC) — Hydrodynamical resimulations for cosmological inferences
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📋 "Hydrodynamical resimulations for cosmological inferences" led by Raul Angulo and Francisco Maion from the Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC)
Shortly after the Big Bang, the Universe was extremely hot and homogenous, with very little density fluctuations. As it expanded and cooled, gravity pulled matter together, ultimately leading to the formations of stars and galaxies.
This process can be simulated by evolving a young Universe via supercomputer simulations and, if done with the appropriate physical laws, the result closely resembles the real Universe. But simplifications of these laws are necessary and, as there is not a unique way of making them, this project aimed to perform state-of-the-art galaxy-formation simulations to understand which simulations yield a reasonable Universe and which do not.
🖥️ Thanks to RES Supercomputer #MareNostrum5 from Barcelona Supercomputing Center, the team studied the "feedback" in these simulations; varying several parameters to understand how their variations affect galaxy formation, among which can be highlighted:
🔹The amount of energy emitted by supernovae in a given amount of time
🔹The amount of energy emitted by the accretion of the supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies
📸 The image shows, on the left side, the dark matter density in the simulated region and, on the right side, the gas and stars present in the region. The simulations shows how:
🔹 With high feedback, a lot of matter gets expelled and there are little stars and galaxies
🔹With low feedback, dark matter is able to attract the gas and form a large amount of stars and galaxies
The results indicate that no combination of these parameters successfully reproduces the large number of galaxies we see in our Universe while simultaneously expelling the most of their gas from the gravitational well, suggesting that additional physical processes must be considered