Bolshoi Simulation of the Universe [720p]

The Bolshoi simulation is the most accurate cosmological simulation of the evolution of the large-scale structure of the universe yet made ("bolshoi" is the Russian word for "great" or "grand"). The first two of a series of research papers describing Bolshoi and its implications have been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. The first data release of Bolshoi outputs, including output from Bolshoi and also the BigBolshoi or MultiDark simulation of a volume 64 times bigger than Bolshoi, has just been made publicly available to the world's astronomers and astrophysicists.

The starting point for Bolshoi was the best ground- and space-based observations, including NASA's long-running and highly successful WMAP Explorer mission that has been mapping the light of the Big Bang in the entire sky. One of the world's fastest supercomputers then calculated the evolution of a typical region of the universe a billion light years across. The Bolshoi simulation took 6 million cpu hours to run on the Pleiades supercomputer—recently ranked as seventh fastest of the world's top 500 supercomputers—at NASA Ames Research Center.

This visualization of dark matter is 1/1000 of the gigantic Bolshoi cosmological simulation, zooming in on a region centered on the dark matter halo of a very large cluster of galaxies.

credit: Chris Henze, NASA Ames Research Center

source: http://hipacc.ucsc.edu/Bolshoi/

• Category

  Science & Technology

[MondrosenPrime]

I need an interactive version of this, where I can zoom in & out, select a specific point in the simulation and be provided with information.

And a desktop screensaver.

[djxatlanta]

- there are dozens of movies from this simulation available -- click the link I provided in the description. However, you won't be able to do a realtime zoom/exploration -- these animations took quite a long time to render. I'm sure you can create your own screensaver by stitching together several of the movies via a number of programs you can find online.

[zingy1914]

That is extraordinary.

And to think that is only 14 billion light years in diameter, where as the size of the universe could be on an even bigger scale as we are limited to to viewing it as fast as light can travel

[OpenMawProductions]

It's a beautiful place we live in, isn't it?

[cornmon]

And those bubbles of fog are nothing but raw material and galaxies..fantastic..

[cornmon]

Imagine the things outside of our visible universal bubble..their light running on a treadmill with the expanding universe..trying to get to us..

[Don Throughsix]

I think I feel better now.

[Xis03]

Yea that's the universe '-', I want to see they do the "rest' :>

[lovelplants]

wow cool... looks so real..

[marmaladekamikaze]

sciencedaily[DOT]com/releases/­2011/09/110929144645.htm

[djxatlanta]

- current cosmological models suggest that space itself went a rapid expansion shortly after the universe's expansion, and this rapid expansion was indeed faster than the speed of light. Because of this faster-than-light expansion, there is a light-horizon beyond which we cannot see. Due to the presence of dark matter in a relatively small universe, the expansion rate slowed, and then began accelerating again (as it is now) due to dark energy.