The Euclid consortium, the international group that manages the Euclid space telescope of the European Space Agency, has just published the largest simulation of the world.
This mapping an amazing number of 3.4 billion galaxies and follows the gravitational interactions of over 4 trillion particles, transmits
Named flagship 2, the simulation is based on an algorithm designed by astrophysicist Joachim Stadel of the University of Zurich (UZH). In 2019, Stadel used the supercomputer Piz Daint, then the third supercomputer in the world, to perform the calculations, finally creating an extremely detailed virtual model, according to Space.
“These simulations are crucial for preparing the analysis of Euclid data,” said Astrophysicist Julian Adamek in Uzh, a project collaborator.
Since 2023, the Euclid space telescope mapping billions of galaxies in the universe, studying the distribution of dark energy and dark matter. The spacecraft will eventually scan about one third of the night sky. Given the extent of the project, Euclid produces huge amounts of data, and simulations like flagship 2 help accelerate processing times.
Although the team anticipates that Euclid observations will correspond closely to simulation predictions, surprises are likely to occur. Flagship 2 works on the basis of the standard cosmological model, which represents what we now know about the composition of the universe. But missions like Euclid are designed to cause us current knowledge. “We already see signs of cracks in the standard model,” Stadel said.
Data publication
The team is particularly excited to study the mystery of dark energy, the force that determines the expansion of the universe. In the standard cosmological model, dark energy is simply a constant. But Euclid’s observations, which will analyze up to 10 billion years in the past, could reveal different features. “We can see how the universe expanded at that time and we can measure if this constant remained really constant,” Adamek said.
