Simulating disk galaxies inside a cosmological volume
This movie shows a simulated disk galaxy which is similar to our milk way galaxy in both mass and size. The purple-red color map shows the smoothed gas distribution in side the galaxy, while the white dots represent each simulated star particles.
The researcher (Dr. Weiguang Cui) with his collaborator run a very high-resolution simulation in Archer to search for disk-like galaxies and to understand their formation within a cosmological content. This simulation includes a very complex model which mimic the most baryon processes happened in the Universe.
The movie shows an example of the typical disk-like galaxy formed in the simulation. The team is working right now on understanding its formation through looking back to its complete history.