Researchers at MIT and Harvard have created a giant virtual universe.


watch full screen.

"The Illustris simulation is the most ambitious computer simulation of our Universe yet performed. The calculation tracks the expansion of the universe, the gravitational pull of matter onto itself, the motion of cosmic gas, as well as the formation of stars and black holes. These physical components and processes are all modeled starting from initial conditions resembling the very young universe 300,000 years after the Big Bang and until the present day, spanning over 13.8 billion years of cosmic evolution. The simulated volume contains tens of thousands of galaxies captured in high-detail, covering a wide range of masses, rates of star formation, shapes, sizes, and with properties that agree well with the galaxy population observed in the real universe. The simulations were run on supercomputers in France, Germany, and the US. The largest was run on 8,192 compute cores, and took 19 million CPU hours. A single state-of-the-art desktop computer would require more than 2000 years to perform this calculation."

TLDR: it shows a 35 and 350 million cubic lightyear 3d model of how the universe has evolved over the last 13 billion years.

This post was edited by NatureNames on May 8 2014 01:17am

Since people were talking about the size of the universe in a recent topic, I thought I'd bump this topic. It will help give an idea of what science considers the universe to have looked like since the big bang - at least 350 million cubic light years of space, that is. Skip to 4:30 mark in the video if you just want to see the full scale model. The first part of the video does some zoom-ins and has more information. It should definitely be watched full screen if possible.

Looking at this model I cannot fathom that us tiny humans with our reasoning, could decipher any reason or purpose for the vastness of the universe.

We are part of this universe, we are in this universe, and the universe is in us.

This post was edited by NatureNames on Jun 14 2014 09:49am

I'll be impressed when they build it in Minecraft

This post was edited by bigbrd222 on Jun 14 2014 11:45am

Lol, I thought of minecraft too. Not gunna lie

Way cool doe

It's not just 350 million cubic lightyears, it's a cubic region with side length 350 million light years... making it 42875000000000000000000000 cubic light years.
Of course the observable universe is bigger... 399800000000000000000000000000000 cubic light years... about 9.3 million times the volume of the simulation
And considering you can fit 411900000000000000000000000 Earths into a single cubic light year, the universe is a pretty big place eh? Mostly empty space but still

I knew this but broadly overlooked it because i haven't dealt with cubic measurements for 10+ years Thanks, I fail at math.

This post was edited by NatureNames on Jun 16 2014 09:54am

gee when time is lapsing in billions of years our time on earth does seem insignificantly small .... better make the best of it