超級計算機在3周內(nèi)創(chuàng)造了800萬個模擬宇宙

超級計算機在3周內(nèi)創(chuàng)造了800萬個模擬宇宙

Figuring out how our reality took shape over billions of years is no easy task for scientists. Theories about how the Big Bang played out and the immediate aftermath are a dime a dozen, but researchers led by a team from the University of Arizona think they might stumble upon some of the secrets of galaxy formation by asking a supercomputer to simulate millions of virtual universes and seeing which ones come closest to what we see today.

對于科學(xué)家來說，雖然弄清楚幾十億年來我們的現(xiàn)實是如何形成的并不容易，但關(guān)于宇宙大爆炸是如何發(fā)生的，以及隨之而來的后果的理論還是十拿九穩(wěn)的，但是由亞利桑那大學(xué)的一個研究小組領(lǐng)導(dǎo)的研究人員認為，他們可能會通過讓一臺超級計算機，模擬數(shù)百萬個虛擬宇宙并看到星系形成的一些秘密。哪一個最接近我們今天看到的。

In a new research paper published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the team explains how they used a supercomputer system nicknamed the “Universe Machine” to watch billions of (virtual) years of galaxy formation play out before their eyes.

在《英國皇家天文學(xué)會月刊》上發(fā)表的一篇新研究論文中，研究小組解釋了他們?nèi)绾问褂靡粋€綽號為“宇宙機器”的超級計算機系統(tǒng)，來觀察數(shù)十億年(虛擬的)星系形成過程。

NASA, ESA, and J. Lotz and the HFF Team/STScI

“On the computer, we can create many different universes and compare them to the actual one and that lets us infer which rules lead to the one we see,” Peter Behroozi, lead author of the study, said in a statement.

這項研究的主要作者彼得·貝魯齊在一份聲明中說：“在計算機上，我們可以創(chuàng)建許多不同的宇宙，并將它們與實際的宇宙進行比較，這樣我們就可以推斷出是哪些規(guī)則導(dǎo)致了我們看到的宇宙。”

This approach allowed the scientists to test long-held theories about how galaxies formed in the wake of the Big Bang and it’s already offered some eye-opening insights. Hot gas building in a galaxy due to activity from black holes, stellar explosions and the gravitational pull of dark matter should be a death sentence for a galaxy, preventing new stars from forming. The researchers say that in simulations that match real-world observations, that’s not the case.

這種方法使科學(xué)家們能夠測試長期以來關(guān)于星系是如何在大爆炸后形成的理論，并且它已經(jīng)提供了一些令人大開眼界的見解。由于黑洞的活動、恒星爆炸和暗物質(zhì)的引力作用，在星系中形成熱氣體應(yīng)該是一個星系的終結(jié)，防止新恒星的形成。研究人員說，在與實際觀測相匹配的模擬中，情況并非如此。

“As we go back earlier and earlier in the universe, we would expect the dark matter to be denser and therefore the gas to be getting hotter and hotter,” Behroozi explained. “This is bad for star formation, so we had thought that many galaxies in the early universe should have stopped forming stars a long time ago. But we found the opposite: galaxies of a given size were more likely to form stars at a higher rate, contrary to the expectation.”

貝魯茲解釋說:“當(dāng)我們回到宇宙中越來越早的時候，我們預(yù)計暗物質(zhì)的密度會越來越大，因此氣體會變得越來越熱。”“這不利于恒星的形成，所以我們認為，早期宇宙中的許多星系應(yīng)該在很久以前就停止了恒星的形成。但我們發(fā)現(xiàn)了相反的情況:特定大小的星系更有可能以更高的速度形成恒星，這與預(yù)期相反。”

All of this work required some intense computing power and the researchers enlisted the help of NASA as well as resources from German scientists, combined with their own supercomputer at the university, to make it happen. A total of 2,000 processors ran simultaneously for three weeks to generate over 8 million virtual universes.

所有這些工作都需要強大的計算能力，研究人員得到了NASA的幫助，以及德國科學(xué)家的資源，再加上他們自己在大學(xué)里的超級計算機，才得以實現(xiàn)這一目標(biāo)?？偣灿?000個處理器同時運行了三周，生成了超過800萬個虛擬宇宙。