Baby Milky Way Model Is Highest-Resolution-Ever Galaxy Sim
June 25, 2009
How quickly they grow. First they're just a couple wisps of gas and next thing you know they're a galaxy 100,000 light years wide.
Cosmotologist Ben Moore at the University of Zurich in Switzerland has unearthed the Milky Way's baby pictures, so to speak, in a mathematical simulation that is the highest-resolution simulation ever produced of a galaxy's formation.
"For the first time we've resolved individual molecular clouds, the hot [dark matter] halo and cold streams of gas that travel like a river" into the center of the fledgling galaxy, Moore told ScienceNews.
The simulation begins shortly after the Big Bang and progresses 2 billion years, after which point the image on screen contains spiral arms and looks like a real, albeit young, Milky Way Galaxy.
The model isn't perfect, notes Moore: it produces a stellar bulge three times more massive than the Milky Way's.
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