supercomputer simulation tagged posts

Merging neutron stars are excellent targets for multi-messenger astronomy. This modern and still very young method of astrophysics coordinates observations of the various signals from one and the same astrophysical source. When two neutron stars collide, they emit gravitational waves, neutrinos and radiation across the entire electromagnetic spectrum...

Using a supercomputer simulation, a research team at Lund University in Sweden has succeeded in following the development of a galaxy over a span of 13.8 billion years. The study shows how, due to interstellar frontal collisions, young and chaotic galaxies over time mature into spiral galaxies such as the Milky Way.

Soon after the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, the Universe was an unruly place. Galaxies constantly collided. Stars formed at an enormous rate inside gigantic gas clouds. However, after a few billion years of intergalactic chaos, the unruly, embryonic galaxies became more stable and over time matured into well-ordered spiral galaxies...

Snapshot of gravitational waves propagating from binary black holes merging inside of a star. Credit: Kyoto University, Joseph M. Fedrow

Far from earth, two black holes orbit around each other propagating waves that bend time and space. Gravitational waves was first predicted by Albert Einstein over a century ago on the basis of his theory of general relativity. And as always: Einstein was right. But it took until 2015 for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory to detect gravitational waves for the first time: findings which earned the LIGO team the Nobel Prize in physics two years later. In addition to the shockwave this discovery sent across the scientific community, it also gave researchers the new field of gravitational wave astronomy...