Researchers have now worked together to make a virtual replica of the universe containing 2.1 trillion particles stored on a massive 3,000 TB storage.
Astronomers Observe Multiple Universes
According to the story by ScienceAlert, astronomy is quite different from other sciences due to only having a sample size of 1. Since the cosmos contains everything observable, astronomers can't just study multiple universes in order to see how the Earth's Universe is doing.
What scientists can do, however, is to create computer simulations of the Earth's Universe. This can be done by tweaking multiple aspects of their simulation, which can help astronomers see how things just like dark matter or even dark energy play a role in the Earth's Universe.
Virtual Simulation Containing 2.1 Trillion Particles
For those that are willing to spend on a fancy hard drive, the virtual simulation can be downloaded. The Uchuu simulation is by far the largest as well as the most detailed simulation of the Universe that was ever made! ASKAP was able to detect repeating radio signals from the Milky Way Galaxy's center, and space experts noted that it doesn't come from known sources.
It reportedly contains 2.1 trillion particles in a space that is about 9.6 billion light-years across. The simulation models the whole evolution of the Universe spreading through over 13 billion years. It doesn't really focus on the formation of stars and planets but does look towards the behavior of dark matter that is within an expanding Universe.
Uchuu Universe with Dark Matter
The detail of Uchuu is already high enough that the team is able to identify everything coming from galaxy clusters to dark matter halos of other individual galaxies. Since dark matter reportedly makes up most of the matter that is in the Universe. It is considered the main driver of galaxy formation as well as clustering.
It reportedly takes quite an amount of computational power and storage to be able to create such a detailed model. The team reportedly uses over 40,000 computer cores as well as 20 million computer hours to be able to generate the simulation. It was reportedly produced with over 3 Petabytes or 3,000 TB or 3 million GB of data.
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Scientific Data Mining
It can, however, be stored on a single drive. An example of this is the Nimbus which is a 100 TB SSD that costs $40,000. The data, however, can be accessed easily online at skiesanduniverses.org. Astrobiologists are now claiming that space viruses could exist in other exoplanets.
In addition to a detailed cosmic simulation, the Uchuu simulation can be used by researchers that are working on scientific data mining. Since large sky surveys, as well as more simulations, are created, the data will reportedly become so large that data mining will reportedly play quite a crucial role when it comes to astronomical research. The story was originally published by Universe Today.
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Written by Urian B.
