Researchers at the University of Zurich have obtained a gigantic catalog of 25,000 million galaxies that they have called Pkdgrav3 from 2 trillion digital particles. To generate the simulation, the researchers used the Piz Daint supercomputer from the Swiss National Supercomputing Center, the fastest in Europe . The device took 80 hours to create. The objective is to accurately describe the dynamics of dark matter and its structure , and to have an ultra-powerful tool for the experiments to be carried out on board Euclides, a telescope of the European Space Agency which is scheduled to launch in 2020 .
The team of astrophysicists at the University of Zurich that has developed this galactic code that describes with unprecedented precision the dynamics of dark matter and the formation of large-scale structures in the universe has taken three years to carry out the project. Its authors Joachim Stadel, Douglas Potter and Romain Teyssier have stated that the PKDGRAV3 code has been designed to optimize the memory and processing capacity of modern supercomputing machines, such as the “Piz Daint” supercomputer of the Swiss National Computing Center (CSCS) . The code generated a virtual universe of two trillion macroparticles that represent the fluid of dark matter , from which a catalog of 25 billion virtual galaxies was extracted.
Thanks to its powerful and precise computing power, the researchers have simulated the formation of a small concentration of matter , called dark matter halos, in which galaxies like the Milky Way are thought to form. The challenge was to model small galaxies, one-tenth the size of the Milky Way, in the context of our observable universe. This was the requirement set by the European mission Euclid, whose main objective is to explore the dark side of the universe. About 95% of the universe is dark , of which 23% is dark matter and 72% is dark energy. The nature of the latter is still one of the main puzzles that science today has yet to solve. Euclides aims to develop a tomographic map of our universe, going back in time to more than 10 billion years. Using the data obtained by Euclid, scientists will gather new information about the nature of the mysterious dark energy and also hope to discover new physical models and particles.
PHOTO CAPTION: A section of the virtual universe.
CREDIT: Joachim Stadel, UZH
