New Simulation of the Universe Like You've Never Seen Before. Using 2 Trillion Particles!

What is it?

[click to enlarge]
The Cosmic Web: A section of the virtual universe, a billion light years across, showing how dark matter is distributed in space, with dark matter halos the yellow clumps, interconnected by dark filaments. Cosmic void, shown as the white areas, are the lowest density regions in the universe. Credit: Joachim Stadel, UZH. Read more at: phys.org...

Dark matter, and energy and halos, oh my.....

Are we getting any closer to being able to visualize what the hell the universe actually is?

From the article:

Over a period of three years, a group of astrophysicists from the University of Zurich has developed and optimised a revolutionary code to describe with unprecedented accuracy the dynamics of dark matter and the formation of large-scale structures in the universe.

The code was executed on this world-leading machine for only 80 hours, and generated a virtual universe of two trillion (i.e., two thousand billion or 2 x 1012) macro-particles representing the dark matter fluid, from which a catalogue of 25 billion virtual galaxies was extracted.

This catalogue is being used to calibrate the experiments on board the Euclid satellite, that will be launched in 2020 with the objective of investigating the nature of dark matter and dark energy.

Measuring subtle distortions

Indeed, about 95 percent of the Universe is dark. The cosmos consists of 23 percent of dark matter and 72 percent of dark energy. "The nature of dark energy remains one of the main unsolved puzzles in modern science," says Romain Teyssier, UZH professor for computational astrophysics. A puzzle that can be cracked only through indirect observation: When the Euclid satellite will capture the light of billions of galaxies in large areas of the sky, astronomers will measure very subtle distortions that arise from the deflection of light of these background galaxies by a foreground, invisible distribution of mass -- dark matter. "That is comparable to the distortion of light by a somewhat uneven glass pane," says Joachim Stadel from the Institute for Computational Science of the UZH.

Very curious to see what the Euclid Mission will uncover.
The Study

originally posted by: PhotonEffect

Are we getting any closer to being able to visualize what the hell the universe actually is?

Looks like the neural network of a brain.

Imagine if we suddenly found out we inhabit a tiny part of some greater beings brain

originally posted by: SaturnFX

originally posted by: PhotonEffect

Are we getting any closer to being able to visualize what the hell the universe actually is?

Looks like the neural network of a brain.

Imagine if we suddenly found out we inhabit a tiny part of some greater beings brain

I was thinking the exact same thing.

originally posted by: SaturnFX

originally posted by: PhotonEffect

Are we getting any closer to being able to visualize what the hell the universe actually is?

Looks like the neural network of a brain.

Imagine if we suddenly found out we inhabit a tiny part of some greater beings brain

Made me think of mycelium...

a reply to: SaturnFX
I said this to my girlfriend the other day after watching something about dark matter she just looked at me like I was crazy. I am glad I'm not the only one that thinks this

originally posted by: SaturnFX

originally posted by: PhotonEffect

Are we getting any closer to being able to visualize what the hell the universe actually is?

Looks like the neural network of a brain.

Imagine if we suddenly found out we inhabit a tiny part of some greater beings brain

That's the thing about the universe really, isn't it? If you think about it in a weird way, it is supposedly inanimate and we can't imagine that being any other way, but...

It contains absolutely everything in the universe, every possible thing that is intelligent is in it so, why should it not be intelligent?

I know, a classroom isn't intelligent just because it contains students but still, food for thought.

a reply to: PhotonEffect

Really lovely!

Also love the Esher Tesselations.

originally posted by: Jonjonj

originally posted by: SaturnFX

originally posted by: PhotonEffect

Are we getting any closer to being able to visualize what the hell the universe actually is?

Looks like the neural network of a brain.

Imagine if we suddenly found out we inhabit a tiny part of some greater beings brain

That's the thing about the universe really, isn't it? If you think about it in a weird way, it is supposedly inanimate and we can't imagine that being any other way, but...

It contains absolutely everything in the universe, every possible thing that is intelligent is in it so, why should it not be intelligent?

I know, a classroom isn't intelligent just because it contains students but still, food for thought.

It's not inanimate, all those galaxies are flying around like shrapnel in an explosion, but ending up spinning around each other like ice skaters.

I do wonder if there isn't something at the centre of these voids. I've played around with 3D reaction-diffusion equations, and when you get get filaments or 3D tubes formed by one chemical, at the same time, you also get blobs formed by the other chemical.

originally posted by: SaturnFX

originally posted by: PhotonEffect

Are we getting any closer to being able to visualize what the hell the universe actually is?

Looks like the neural network of a brain.

Imagine if we suddenly found out we inhabit a tiny part of some greater beings brain

It is and its name is Andross.





I hope someone gets this lol.

Looks like a barbers floor full of hair frokm someone that was painting with yellow.

a reply to: SaturnFX

Of course, the universe is fractal in nature and mirrors itself from the smallest particle to the biggest galaxy. What if this "greater being" is what religion calls God but have distorted?

We are all connected and we are all individuations of the whole.

originally posted by: PhotonEffect
Are we getting any closer to being able to visualize what the hell the universe actually is?

The amount of pages of mathematics seems endless. And there is a very small subset of mathematical expressions that accurately represent nature's behavior in a very closed and narrow context. The thing is there are tons of mathematical truths that have no corresponding behavior in nature. And there seems always be MORE behavior in nature that occurs outside our representation of it.

Accuracy and completeness is impossible to prove. The picture you've shown is a representation. But there is always a fundamental property of representations. Consider a road map. Road Maps show you reality. Road maps give you insight about where to go. The thing is when you travel down the road reality has a huge amount of more detail than is ever represented in the map. The fundamental property of all representations is they have limitations. Accuracy and completeness seems to be impossible to achieve. We may think we have a good map of reality, but there may exist details that are not being shown in our representation.

The thing about the Universe although she seems to have a finite amount of energy then something comes along and changes our whole perception. Take the expansion of the Universe. Not only is the Universe expanding, but it is accelerating. Where is the energy coming from to fuel the expansion? I'm not saying energy is being created from nothing. I'm just saying our map of the Universe, at any given moment, may have to be revised to include new details we've never known existed. And the funny thing is there always seems to me more details discovered all the time. I think it will always be an act of faith in declaring our map is complete and accurate at any given moment.

I'm not sure we could ever be absolutely sure we have perfect accuracy and completeness with our map of reality.

a reply to: dfnj2015

I'm not sure we could ever be absolutely sure we have perfect accuracy and completeness with our map of reality.

Yes thats a problem science will always face. Perhaps all of reality relies on a undetectable force that is as light as a fether yet totally indispensable....

originally posted by: SaturnFX
Looks like the neural network of a brain.

Imagine if we suddenly found out we inhabit a tiny part of some greater beings brain

It sure does, or a hairy arm.

I imagine often, that the universe if a living thing. We're alive, so I guess there should be some truth to the idea.

Thanks for the post

a reply to: chr0naut

Thanks chr0!

Takes a rather long post to see how deep the hole goes...

a reply to: dfnj2015

I agree. Science can only ever be an approximation of the true reality of the universe. Like you said, our most "accurate" representation of the universe gives us only a fuzzy idea of what it is.

Here's to an endless effort by humankind to sharpen up that image

originally posted by: CreationBro

originally posted by: SaturnFX

originally posted by: PhotonEffect

Are we getting any closer to being able to visualize what the hell the universe actually is?

Looks like the neural network of a brain.

Imagine if we suddenly found out we inhabit a tiny part of some greater beings brain

It is and its name is Andross.

I hope someone gets this lol.

Starfox!

a reply to: PhotonEffect

What confuses me is that they can figure out where dark matter is on this large scale yet nobody can point at it within our vicinity. Where is it?

---

Btw, I guess we are part of a big sponge or something like that.

Sort of looks like:

Sponge


Skeletal Muscle


neurons

seems everyone is gravitating to a representation which looks like a neural-network in a Brain




I propose that the universe more resembles a kernel of popcorn...
in my fuzzy image you can see a distinct 'hole' in the midst of the structure....

that 'hole' or expanse of the 'Vacuum' is the reason that the observable universe is only slightly larger than some 15 billion light years deep....

now, it is possible that my proposed 'kernel-of-popcorn' (Universe) is only one such creation in a whole bag full of popcorn (Cosmos)

...but a bag-of-popped-corn is significantly different than a neural-network system...

to each their own ~ as they say