http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4600981.stm
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Astronomers have used supercomputers to re-create how the Universe evolved into the shape it is today.

The simulation by an international team is the biggest ever attempted and shows how structures in the Universe changed and grew over billions of years.

The Millennium Run, as it is dubbed, could help explain observations made by astronomers and shed more light on the Universe's elusive dark energy field.

Details of the study appear in the latest issue of Nature magazine.
We have learned more about the Universe in the last 10 or 20 years than in the whole of human civilisation," said Professor Carlos Frenk, Ogden professor of fundamental physics at the University of Durham and co-author on the Nature report.

"We are now able, using the biggest, fastest supercomputers in the world, to recreate the whole of cosmic history," he told the BBC.

The researchers looked at how the Universe evolved under the influence of the mysterious material called dark matter.

Dark matter model

According to cosmological theory, soon after the Big Bang, cold dark matter formed the first large structures in the Universe, which then collapsed under their own weight to form vast halos.

The gravitational pull of these halos sucked in normal matter, providing a focus for the formation of galaxies.

The simulation tracked some 10 billion dark matter particles over roughly 13 billion years of cosmic evolution. It incorporated data from satellite observations of the heat left over from the Big Bang, information on the make-up of the Universe and current understanding of the laws of physics on Earth.

"What's unique about the simulation is its scope and the level of detail with which we can re-create the cosmic structures we see around us," Professor Frenk commented.

English Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees told the BBC: "Now we have the Millennium Run simulations, we have the predictions of the theory in enough detail that we can see if there is a meshing together of how the world looks on the larger scale and the way we expect it should look according to our theories. It's a way to check our theories."

Energy problem

Comparisons between the results of the simulation and astronomical observations are already helping shed light on some unsolved cosmic mysteries.

Some astronomers have previously questioned how radio-sources in distant galaxies called quasars could have formed so quickly after the Big Bang under the cold dark matter model.

The Millennium Run simulation demonstrates that such structures form naturally under the model in numbers consistent with data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

The virtual universe may also shed light on the nature of dark energy, which makes up about 73% of the known Universe, and which, Frenk says, is the "number one unsolved problem in physics today - if not science itself".

"Our simulations tell us where to go looking for clues to learn about dark energy. If we want to learn about this we need to look at galaxy clusters, which encode information about the identity of dark energy," Professor Frenk explained.

I don't see what data they have to create this. It's all just guessing. No one will ever know how the universe grew or what the entirety of it looks like.

Of course you don't see it. You were not working on the project..

Ausaria
I don't see what data they have to create this. It's all just guessing. No one will ever know how the universe grew or what the entirety of it looks like.

(For some odd reason it wouldn't quote.)

In my opinion and what I have read about space and such, to study the cosmo's you have to look outside of the box for the answers, so to speak. The answers are like a jigsaw puzzle, therefore we find ways to put it together. Many things are difficult to test at first, and usually the tests aren't direct. Ie, we cannot study a black hole directly because we cannot travel to one. Therefore they observe cosmic events and then find a way of testing their hypothesis. It's much more technical than just guessing. Although it might not be exact, it paints a good picture of what really happened.

We can send anything into a black hole that we want, we just wont be able to get any answers back from it. Black holes are one of the strangest things we have ever encountered. General Relativity has a handle on the entropy and masses of a black hole, but it takes quantum physics to explain what happens in the singularity. The problem as you all should know is that general relativity and quantum mechanics just suck balls when they are put to the task of working together. Bast*rds. Anyway, the universe works, and thats a major clue that there is a mathematical equation that explains why. String theory is coming along nicely to put everything together and finally finish the jigsaw puzzle. But, after we get all that worked out, from the smallest things in the universe and how they effect the largest things we can see we run right into another wall. The jigsaw puzzle we just created ends up looking just like a single peice of a jigsaw puzzle, and we must venture even larger and larger to figure out the mysteries of why gravity on EXTREMELY large scales becomes a repulsive instead of attractive force. Sucks doesnt it? Oh well, our instinctive strive for understanding the universe has brought us so far we realise we dont really know anything.

In conclusion i think jimmy buffet sucks, and he should have been dragged out into the street and shot a long time ago, perferrably before they built the margaritaville cafe.

Stupid music will always reign because stupid people like stupid things, and are unable to grasp the concept that everything doesnt have to be so formulaic.

FWIW, Ausaria, here are some examples.

Surveys of the deep sky, gathering data (spectra and images) has been undertaken by many astrophysics groups.
For instance, during the late '90s, there was a survey by what was considered to be the world's most complex instrument- The Two Degree Field system.
In Australia, they amassed information on 250,000 galaxies. The goal was to ultimately make a 3-D map of the Southern Sky. I am sure that numerous scientific papers were published, on many topics.
In addition, they conducted a survey on 30,000 quasars (quasi stellars are black holes in the distant universe that came from super-super massive primordial stars, mostly).

Their instrument used fiber optics moved by a robot system-

Optic Bundles


On the inside of the field plate-

Field Plate


Which is mounted on the forward end of the telscope-

Gold Colored 'Eye' of the Telescope


Which pass the light from galaxies on to spectrograph units-

One of Two Spectrographs


Which are mounted as a pair on the outer support ring-

A Very Important Component of Most Studies


Sample Spectrum-

A Galaxy Spectrum (perhaps elliptical, or irregular galaxy)

A Galaxy With Active Nuclei (black hole at center, like our spiral galaxy)


Telescope Picture

Sun Going Down


Then they build models, and theories on structure and elements and energy-

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

Image 4

Image 5 (smoothed data)

Quasar Distribution


Another was done at UK Schmidt Telescope at Siding Spring, Australia.
They used a laser to scan photographic plates- 2 million stars. They concluded that
Dark Matter was not as much, as previously estimated. Dark Matter was, I believe, a theory of the 1970s, from J. Osterick. Its only quality was non-electromagnetic. It was gravitational.
No light, just density enough to attract 'regular' matter. And, the 2dF survey of the late 1990s, determined that the amount of dark matter was roughly the same as regular matter.

The upshot to that is there is more energy alive in the universe than matter around us.
The density and distribution of galaxies, and the distances at which various groups move at slower or faster speeds, means that older galaxies travel slower, while newer ones move faster. Those which appear newer and closer, say around 4 billion lightyears away move faster, older ones move slower. Like a trampoline, things began, then cooled and collapsed somewhat, but rebounded from the collisions, with extra energy (dark energy, in particular).

They compared their findings to cosmic microwave studies, and found agreement
between the oldest relic energy patterns know- microwaves (they were once higher energy, but just barely exist today, at cold tempertures). The distribution
of visible galaxies and concentrations of microwave background energy show the same patterns. That helps constrain new theory, which is good.

And one last thing, the surveys showed the universe is more 'gentle' than ever thought. The ripples in the patterns are smoother than previously imagined, by about 20%. Means fewer large galaxy clusters, which means fewer collisions between galaxy groups.


Another ambitious study is Sloan Digital Sky Survey, in New Mexico. They will catalogue a million galaxies and quasars, and 100 million stars.
Here is a starter map that they began to construct, a few years ago-

Sloan Digital Sky Survey

And, after those 66,000 galaxies, and measurements, and spectra were plotted,
this comparison power graph was created. It shows that closer to us, things are more dense with material, and more developed. But, as they look toward earlier
galaxies, there was less organized clumpiness, and fewer great sheets of aligned material, as well. Hydrogen surveys, Hubble Space Telescope surveys (revelations of gravity lensing from clumps of galaxies, relating to Dark Matter),
Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and the latest cosmic microwave survey are graphed-


Graph on Distribution of Mass


Sloan Telescope with camera and spectrograph-

Telescope


Meanwhile, dozens of topics generate scientific papers.