Prelims: Current events of national and international importance | Space
Why in News?
Researchers at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian have developed Lumina, that reconstructs the first 2 billion years following the Big Bang.
- Lumina is a large-scale cosmological simulation.
- Objective – To advance understanding of the formation and evolution of early stars, galaxies, and black holes.
- Significance – It helps interpret observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.
- Key Features
- Type – Cosmological radiation hydrodynamics simulation.
- Scale – Simulates a cubic region approximately 1.5 billion light-years per side, representing a volume over 100 times greater than previous comparable projects.
- Computing power – Utilised over 15,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) on the Frontier supercomputer.
- Supercomputer location – Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, USA.
- Key advance – Simulates the interactions among ordinary matter, dark matter, and radiation, while tracking the evolution of the early universe.
- Significance
- Cosmic Evolution – Studies the formation of early stars, galaxies and black holes.
- Theory Validation – Examines intergalactic gas and radiation to test cosmological theories against observations.
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James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)
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- Launched in December 2021.
- Infrared space telescope.
- Studies early galaxies, star formation, exoplanets and the evolution of the universe.
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Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope
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- NASA space observatory designed for wide-field infrared surveys.
- Will investigate dark energy, dark matter, exoplanets and large-scale cosmic structures.
- Lumina can help compare theoretical predictions with its observations.
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Reference
Science Daily | Recreated the First 2 Billion Years of the Universe
