An astonishing 99.6% of our Universe is dark. Observations indicate that the Universe consists of 70% of a mysterious dark energy and 25% of a yet-unidentified dark matter component, and only 0.4% of the remaining ordinary matter is visible.
Understanding the physics of this dark sector is the foremost challenge in cosmology today. Sophisticated simulations of the evolution of the Universe play a crucial task in this endeavor.
This movie shows an intermediate stage in a large simulation of the distribution of matter in the Universe, the so-called cosmic web, accounting for the influence of dark energy. The simulation is evolving 1.1 trillion particles. The movie shows a snapshot of the Universe when it was 1.6 billion years old.
While this video may be obvious to people in the field, it would be nice if they had some narration to accompany each scene so that we know what we are looking at! After all, they went to all this trouble to make a visual representation of the simulation and posting it on YouTube for the public to see. Might as well put a little bit more effort in telling us what each of those different scenes are. Otherwise, all we see are cool images without learning anything much.
Of course, the physicist in me would like to know what kind of parameters were used, what are the assumptions, where was this/will this be published, etc. Y'know, the mundane stuff! :)
Zz.
1 comment:
The percent don't add up.
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