Secrets of the Dark Universe: Simulating the Sky on the Blue Gene/Q, The Outer Rim Simulation

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. Credits: Science: Hal Finkel, Salman Habib, Katrin Heitmann, Kalyan Kumaran, Vitali Morozov, Tom Peterka, Adrian Pope and Tim Williams, Argonne National Laboratory David Daniel, Patricia Fasel and Nicholas Frontiere, Los Alamos National Laboratory Zarija Lukic, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Visualization: Mark Hereld, Joseph A. Insley, Michael E. Papka and Venkatram Vishwanath, Argonne National Laboratory