Life in space … Simulating the growth of galaxies over 13.8 billion years

Using a supercomputer simulation, a research team from Lund University in Sweden has managed to track the evolution of a galaxy over a period of 13.8 billion years.

The study shows how young chaotic galaxies mature over time into spiral galaxies like the Milky Way, due to forward collisions between stars.

Shortly after the Big Bang 13.8 billion years ago, the universe was a wild place, where galaxies constantly collide and stars formed in giant gas clouds in giant gas clouds. and over time matures into neat spiral galaxies.

The exact path of these developments has long been a mystery to astronomers around the world, and a new study, published in the latest issue of the Royal Astronomical Society’s Monthly Notices, may have shed some light on the matter.

“Using a supercomputer, we created a high-resolution simulation that provides a detailed picture of galactic evolution since the Big Bang and how young chaotic galaxies turn into neat spirals,” says Oscar. Agres, researcher in astronomy at Lund University. in a report published on the university’s website on the occasion of the publication of the study. .

In the study, astronomers led by Oscar Agres and Florent Renaud used the stars of the Milky Way as a starting point, and the stars act as time capsules that reveal the secrets of distant ages and the environment in which they formed, so their locations, speeds and amounts of different chemical elements, using computer simulations, can help us understand how our galaxy is made up.

“We have discovered that when two large galaxies collide, a new disk can be created around the old galaxy due to the massive outflows of star-forming gases, and our simulations show that the old and the new disks have slowly merged over several billion years “, explains Florent Renaud, researcher in astronomy at Lund University.

“This not only stabilized a spiral galaxy, but also star clusters similar to those in the Milky Way,” he adds.

The new findings will help astronomers interpret current and future maps of the Milky Way, and the study points to a new direction of research where the focus will be on the interplay between collisions of large galaxies and the formation of disk disks. spiral galaxies.

“With the current study and our new computer simulations, we will generate a lot of information that will allow us to better understand the wonderful life of the Milky Way since the beginning of the universe”, concludes Oscar Agres.