It's nearly impossible to grasp the scale: physicists have created the largest model of the universe (video).

Physicists utilized the world's most powerful supercomputer to demonstrate the largest computer astrophysical model of the Universe ever created. This model provides a new foundation for simulating the physics of ordinary and dark matter, as reported by ScienceAlert.

As part of the ExaSky project, physicists employed 9,000 computing nodes of the Frontier supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (USA) to develop the most extensive model of the expanding Universe, showcasing a portion that spans over 300,000 cubic megaparsecs.

According to the scientists, the Universe is composed of ordinary matter, which makes up humans, planets, stars, and galaxies, as well as invisible dark matter. The latter interacts with ordinary matter solely through gravity.

Therefore, to comprehend what is happening in the Universe, it is essential to create a comprehensive simulation of both ordinary and dark matter, incorporating gravity along with all other known physics, including hot interstellar gas, as well as the formation of stars, black holes, and galaxies. This approach is known as cosmological hydrodynamics simulation. Such modeling requires an immense amount of computation and is more complex compared to simulating the expanding Universe, which only includes gravitational effects. Nevertheless, physicists have succeeded in creating the most extensive astrophysical simulation of the Universe ever made.

When scientists study the Universe, they not only examine vast distances in space but also look back in time. Light from the most distant galaxies and other astronomical objects has, in some cases, traveled billions of light-years. One light-year is the distance that light travels in one Earth year at the speed of light, approximately 9.7 trillion kilometers. Thus, scientists observe distant objects as they were billions of years ago.

However, piecing together the entire picture of the Universe's evolution, which began 13.8 billion years ago, throughout its history is very challenging. Moreover, the Universe is not static but is continuously expanding. It is believed that the most distant objects in the Universe are currently over 45 billion light-years away from us.

To visualize how the Universe has changed over its history and how it may be changing now as it continues to expand, modeling the evolution of space is instrumental. The new ExaSky simulations will further enhance our understanding of the physics of the Universe on vast scales, as scientists can slow down time, accelerate it, rewind it, and observe what happens to the Universe at different periods in its history.

For the creation of the largest model of the Universe, scientists utilized the HACC code, which was first developed 15 years ago. Researchers had to improve it to create the ExaSky model.

As a result, the fastest supercomputer in the world has helped to create an incredible unified picture of evolution on a grand scale. Physicists showcased a video of a portion of the Universe model that illustrates a space volume of 64 by 64 by 76 megaparsecs, or 311,296 cubic megaparsecs. (One megaparsec equals 3,261,563 light-years). This volume represents only 0.001% of the total volume of the Universe model.