Incredible images from space.
It seems as if a lot of little fireflies flicker in the dark and gradually light up the screen.
But no insects can be seen on the recordings.
Researchers have created a simulation of the former universe:
A short time after the Big Bang, when the cosmos transformed from a place of complete darkness to a bright and light-filled environment.
The simulation shows the formation and reionization of the first galaxies.
In the process of reionization, neutral hydrogen atoms in space are converted into positively charged ones.
This allows light to spread throughout the universe.
The epoch took place 13 billion years ago and was not that easy to reconstruct.
It involved complicated interactions between gravity, gas, radiation and light.
“Most astronomers don’t have labs to run experiments in. The space and time scales are too large, so we can only do experiments on computers,” explains Rahul Kannan, an astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics
The simulation shows the universe changing from total darkness to light.
“It’s a bit like water in ice cube trays; if you put it in the freezer it takes a while, but after a while it starts to freeze around the edges and then slowly creeps in,” says study co-author Aaron Smith
The video is part of a series of simulations created by researchers from the Center for Astrophysics, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics.
The simulation captures the physics of the ancient Universe on a scale millions of times smaller while still recreating details of the ancient galaxies.
The research team made this possible by combining a realistic model of galaxy formation with an algorithm that tracks how light interacts with gas.
The simulations were created with one of the world’s largest supercomputers, the SuperMUC-NG.