Smithsonian Scientists Simulate 2 Billion Years of Cosmic History in 1.5-Billion-Light-Year Lumina
Updated
Updated · SciTechDaily · Nov 8
Smithsonian Scientists Simulate 2 Billion Years of Cosmic History in 1.5-Billion-Light-Year Lumina
3 articles · Updated · SciTechDaily · Nov 8
Summary
Lumina recreates the universe’s first 2 billion years in a virtual volume about 1.5 billion light-years across, giving astronomers a detailed record to compare with JWST and future Roman telescope observations.
More than 15,000 GPUs on Oak Ridge’s Frontier supercomputer modeled how ordinary matter, dark matter and radiation interacted, letting researchers track early stars, galaxies and black holes at large scale.
A key advance is modeling helium reionization alongside hydrogen reionization in real time, showing how radiation from the first luminous objects transformed the gas filling the young cosmos.
The Harvard-Smithsonian-led team says the simulation can test whether current post-Big Bang theories match telescope data or whether discrepancies point to missing physics in the early universe.