A team of researchers has compressed the first 14 billion years of the evolution of the universe into a video less than two minutes long using a sophisticated computer simulation.

The simulation, which clocks in at 1 minute, 17 seconds, is the most detailed of its kind. It was developed by a team of researchers at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies.

Using a computer program – known as Arepo – it takes into account the role of fluid dynamics and gravity in the creation and formation of galaxies much more accurately than was previously possible.

And because of that it has created a vision of the universe complete with “majestic spiral galaxies” that could not be produced in previous simulations, said Paul Torrey, a graduate student at the centre who worked on the project.

The new computer software was created by Volker Springel, one of the team members. The simulation was run on Harvard’s supercomputer.

The goal was to produce an image of a slice of the universe as galaxies were forming beginning with the Big Bang and ending 14 billion years later. But because the first images after the Big Bang were of “smoothly distributed gas” and didn’t show anything, the simulation begins at 4 billion years when one of numerous galaxies in the universe begins forming, explained Torrey.

“The universe is made up of an incredibly large number of galaxies and our simulation, which recreates a slice of it, shows some of the galaxies as they are forming.”

What a viewer sees in the computer simulation is the universe as it amplifies and collects more material and forms galaxies.

“When you look at the simulation and see the discs, the gas tends to collapse while retaining its momentum and condenses into a series of localized points which are the galaxies themselves,” said Torrey.

The simulation was run based on “best fit parameters” that currently exist in understanding the universe, including the important role dark matter played.

“We believe now the universe has a dark matter component. A large amount of the universe’s mass is the dark matter content and it behaves differently from other substances than atoms we see here on Earth.

“For example, dark matter doesn’t collide. It only interacts gravitationally.

“When we’re doing simulations of the universe…it’s important we get the behaviour of the gas and actual atoms correct.”

But how accurate is the simulation that the team has created? “This is a good model of the universe. We do get a lot of properties correct. If you compare this thing to the universe as we observe it, it does quite well.”

The effort is “impressive” according to Torrey who helped analyze all the data.

“The fact we arrive at anything that is remotely close to the universe as we observe it is already a large computational feat.”

The new simulation and the computer program is “an important step forward…Arepo is going to help us push forward the accuracy with which we can handle fluid dynamics.”

The program is not only significant for cosmology, but also for other fields within astronomy, including the study of planets, individual galaxies and structure, Torrey explained.

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“We think that using Arepo we’re going to be able to push the envelope in terms of what’s been done in trying to re-simulate slices of the universe.

“One of our direct goals will be to understand how the Milky Way and others like it came to form and evolve.”

With the data and simulation in hand, a large effort internationally is also about to be mounted to compare galaxies in the simulation with galaxies in the night sky. “We’re going to run another simulation to do just that: compare the simulation to actual galaxies,” he said.