Live Science reports that a team called IllustrisTNG has unveiled the most detailed simulation of our universe ever to exist. The simulation models “tens of thousands” of galaxies in unprecedented realistic detail, spanning a total area 230 million lightyears across. The team’s simulation is also progressing, showing how the galaxies are born and continue to evolve. Scientists are hoping to reverse engineer some of the stranger galaxies to better understand how they formed amid surrounding normie galaxies.
The scientists from IllustrisTNG published their third round of findings in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. As the name suggests, IllustrisTNG is the second “next generation” simulation after the original Illustris simulation. This run is the team’s third and most complex.
Illustris The Original Series (TOS) also sought to recreate how the universe grew from a tiny young kernel, and where that simulation involved “only” about 8,000 processors working together, IllustrisTNG involves 16,000 and up to nearly 20,000 processors at times.
Read more: Popular Mechanics
