ASTROPHYSICISTS have created a “time machine” simulation that allows them to watch distant “galaxy cities” forming.
The simulations can recreate the life cycle of galaxies observed in the distant universe 11 billion years ago, a new study shows.
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Processes in outer space may take a very long time on Earth which makes them difficult to study, SciTechDaily reported.
Additionally, when astrophysicists survey heavenly bodies that are 10 billion light-years away, they perceive the object as if we’re seeing it 10 billion years ago.
With this knowledge in mind, researchers would look at galaxies at varying distances and compare the differences in their life cycles.
A team of researchers came together to find a solution to viewing distant galaxies, as they wanted to analyze more phases than what could be perceived in real-time.
“We wanted to try developing a full simulation of the real distant universe to see how structures started out and how they ended,” said Metin Ata.
Ata is a part of a group led by Kavli Institute that wanted to learn more about these far-off galaxies, as they are essentially ancestors of present-day galaxy clusters.
Their solution was Constrained Simulations of the Cosmos Field or COSTCO.
Project Assistant Professor Khee-Gan Lee said that making this invention was like building a time machine.
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“It’s like finding an old black-and-white picture of your grandfather and creating a video of his life,” Lee said of the snapshots they got of far-off galaxy clusters.
With these old “black-and-white pictures,” researchers created a video fast-forwarding the age of clusters of galaxies to show how they would form.
A video shows the results of this research in action.
By using these simulations, researchers were able to predict the final mass and distribution of structures in a given space.
This allowed researchers to unveil previously undetected discrepancies in our current understanding of the universe, SciTechDaily reported.
Their work is also being applied to other projects like studying the cosmological environment of galaxies.
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