Gravitational collapse of initially small-amplitude density fluctuations of dark matter is thought to have led to formation of the large-scale structure seen in the universe today. The simulation visualized here is embedded in a cube 64 megaparsecs (209 million light years) on a side at present, and models dark matter and gaseous components. The large structure in the center is a massive central galaxy cluster (the Santa Barbara Cluster), which could contain on the order of 1,000 galaxies. The simulations were developed by Paul Shapiro and Hugo Martel of the Galaxy Formation and the Intergalactic Medium Research Group at the University of Texas. The simulations took 700 CPU hours on the Cray SV1 at the Advanced Computing Center for Engineering and Science.
Credits
Simulations developed by Paul Shapiro and Hugo Martel of the Galaxy
Formation and the Intergalactic Medium Research Group
(GFIGM) at the University
of Texas, Austin.
The visualization, produced using image rendering software that is being
integrated into the Scalable Visualization Toolkits Alpha Project, was
done at CCV by Marcelo Alvarez.
