The newest and largest supercomputer simulation of the universe agrees so well with astronomical observations that it may point astronomers toward discoveries in unexplored sectors of the universe, says NCSA Research Scientist Mike Norman, who led the effort. The simulation, run on NCSA's CM- 5, visualizes the universe as it would be seen by x-rays, said Norman, UIUC astronomy professor and team leader of NCSA's Astrophysics Group. (A video of the simulation is available from Norman.)
"This is the largest cosmological simulation of the view that
x-rays would give of the universe," Norman said. "Our
simulation is the first that is sufficiently comprehensive to
make theoretical predictions that can be compared with
observations."
The model, funded by NASA and NSF, was announced June 1 at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Minneapolis, MN. Based on algorithms by UIUC graduate student Greg Bryan, the simulation models the effect on cosmic gases of a theory that the universe contains cold and hot dark matter. The simulation closely matches recent x-ray observations of galaxies by ROSAT, NASA-European Space Agency satellite.
Consuming 30 wallclock hours on NCSA's CM-5, the run used a grid of 134 million zones to produce 70 Giga-bytes of data, according to Norman.
The research is part of the Grand Challenge Cosmology Consortium, a multiuniversity collaboration studying the formation of galaxies in cosmologically large-scale structures. It is funded by NSF's HPCC Initiative [see access, Spring 1994].
