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Guest lecture - Universe(s) in a box

When 
Wed, 24/07/2019 - 16:00 to 17:00
Where 

Háskólatorg

HT - 101

Further information 
Open to all

Dr. Annalisa Pillepich, independent  group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy gives a open lecture titled: Universe(s) in a box; Modeling populations of galaxies with supercomputer simulations

Abstract

Astronomical observations are showing us that the Universe is composed of a great variety of galaxies. Galaxies are not only made of stars that we can see in optical light, but are complex “organisms" whose formation and evolution is determined by the interaction of dark matter, cosmic gas, photons, and magnetic fields. Galaxies range in mass from a few thousand to a few trillion times the mass of the sun and encompass physical sizes from a fraction to tens of kilo-parsecs (tens of thousands of light years). They can reside in diverse environments – in isolation, or as members of rich groups and clusters. Their distribution throughout space traces a ‘cosmic web’ defined by filaments, nodes, sheets, and voids of matter. The highly clustered large-scale structure of the Universe today, at mega-parsec and giga-parsec scales, arose from 13.8 billion years of evolution, starting from the nearly homogeneous distribution of matter in the early Universe. With current supercomputer simulations, we can model such an evolution, from the early stages shortly after the Big Bang to the non-linear assembly of matter within galaxy bodies and the formation of galaxies similar to our own Milky Way. In the talk, we will go on a journey through space and time thanks to state-of-the-art numerical models of representative patches of the Universe. These are computational investments of more than 100 million computing hours on thousands of computing cores and producing more than 1PB of data. They allow us to provide the theoretical foundation to some outstanding observational findings and to uncover novel, and sometimes unexpected, insights about galaxies and the large-scale structure.

 

Dr. Annalisa Pillepich

Guest lecture - Universe(s) in a box