Illustris project

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Deutsche Post special postage stamp in honor of the Illustris project
Illustris simulation galaxies

The Illustris project is one of the world's largest continuous astrophysical simulation series , which a team of internationally cooperating scientists has been carrying out since 2011. The aim is to research the processes of formation and development of the galaxy in the universe using a comprehensive physical model. The first results reports were published in the specialist and general press in 2014 and the simulation results were published in April 2015. In 2018 the Illustris team released an update to the Illustris simulation called IllustrisTNG (Illustris The Next Generation). The main developers responsible for the Illustris and IllustrisTNG projects are the astrophysicists Volker Springel ( Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics ) and Mark Vogelsberger ( Massachusetts Institute of Technology ).

overview

The original idea of ​​the Illustris project came from Mark Vogelsberger , who developed the actual galaxy formation model with other scientists over several years. This model is also the basis of the IllustrisTNG simulations.

The Illustris project includes large-scale cosmological simulations of the evolution of the universe from the initial conditions of the Big Bang to today, 13.8 billion years later. The physical model is based on the most precise data and calculations currently available. By comparing the simulation results with actual observations of the universe, the aim is to better understand its nature, including the formation of galaxies, dark matter and dark energy .

IllustrisTNG Simulation - Follow-up project to Illustris based on updates of the Illustris model

The simulation is a hydrodynamic simulation of the dark matter and the gas in the universe. Since only the large-scale flow of matter is simulated in such simulations, small-scale, local astrophysical events with global effects must be artificially incorporated by including the separately investigated effects on their environment in the data. When simulating the Illustris project, the effects of cooling and photoionization of the gas, star formation , star winds , supernova explosions and both stellar black holes and supermassive black holes were taken into account.

In December 2018, Deutsche Post published a special stamp in honor of the Illustris project. Illustris is the first physical computer simulation worldwide to receive its own postage stamp.

In 2018, the Illustris team led by Volker Springel and Mark Vogelsberger presented the IllustrisTNG simulations. These represent an update of Illustris and are based on the original model developed by Mark Vogelsberger with some additional improvements. IllustrisTNG is currently the most extensive and accurate computer model in our universe.

calculation

The most important Illustris simulation ran on the Curie supercomputer of the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (CEA) in France and the SuperMUC at the Leibniz Computing Center (LRZ) in Garching near Munich , Germany . A run of 19 million computer hours was necessary for this, and 8,192 computer cores were used. The maximum memory usage was around 25 TB RAM and a total of 136 simulation snapshots of a total of more than 230 TB data volume were saved.

The IllustrisTNG simulations, TNG50, TNG100 and TNG300 were calculated at the high-performance computing center in Stuttgart on the Hazel Hen supercomputer. In total, these simulations took nearly 200 million CPU hours, making them some of the largest computer simulations ever performed. Almost 25,000 processors worked on the simulation for almost 2 years. The IllustrisTNG simulations generated a total of more than 1 PB of data. These are backed up on various mainframes in Europe and the USA.

To run the Illustris and IllustrisTNG simulations, the computer program “Arepo” was used, which was designed by Volker Springel , who also wrote the gadget code. The name is derived from the Sator square . This code solves coupled equations for gravity and hydrodynamics by discretizing space based on a moving Voronoi diagram . In order to calculate gravitation efficiently, an octree tree structure is used , as is usual with such codes . The code is equipped with a message passing interface for operation on several large supercomputers . The Arepo code was extended for the Illustris and IllustrisTNG simulation by a very extensive galaxy formation model developed by Mark Vogelsberger. This models processes such as star formation, black holes and supernovae.

publication

In April 2015, eleven months after the first scientific publications, the project team published the data from all simulations. They can be downloaded from a dedicated website. This includes group catalogs of individual halos and subhalos, snapshots of data at 135 specific points in time and various additional data catalogs. In addition to the direct download of data, a web-based programming interface was set up to provide access to search and extract complete data sets. In December 2018, the IllustrisTNG data (TNG100, TNG300) were also published. The model for data publishing follows exactly the Illustris approach. However, the amounts of data are significantly larger.

The Illustris and IllustrisTNG simulations also aroused great public interest due to their publications in newspapers, television programs and Internet portals. Various YouTube videos viewed millions of times. Currently, more than a billion people have seen different aspects of the Illustris simulations. The Illustris project is currently the best-known simulation project worldwide.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Looking for some details accessible to a general non-scientist? Or want to jump straight into a description designed for an astrophysicist? Illustris Collaboration, accessed February 28, 2015 .
  2. ↑ a b Mark Vogelsberger et al .: Introducing the Illustris Project . Simulating the coevolution of dark and visible matter in the Universe . In: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society . tape 444 , no. 2 , 2014, ISSN  0035-8711 , p. 1518-1547 .
  3. ↑ Shy Genel et al .: Introducing the Illustris project . The evolution of galaxy populations across cosmic time . In: Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society . tape 445 , no. 1 , 2014, ISSN  0035-8711 , p. 175-200 .
  4. ↑ a b Mark Vogelsberger et al .: Properties of galaxies reproduced by a hydrodynamic simulation . In: Nature . tape 509 , 2014, ISSN  0028-0836 , p. 177-182 .
  5. ^ A b Astronomers Create First Realistic Virtual Universe. Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, May 7, 2014, accessed February 28, 2015 .
  6. ↑ a b Stalking the Shadow Universe. The New York Times, July 16, 2014, accessed February 28, 2015 .
  7. ↑ IllustrisTNG - Project Description. Retrieved May 15, 2019 .
  8. ↑ Volker Springel, Rüdiger Pakmor, Annalisa Pillepich, Rainer Weinberger, Dylan Nelson: First results from the IllustrisTNG simulations: matter and galaxy clustering . In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society . tape 475 , no. 1 , December 22, 2017, ISSN  0035-8711 , p. 676–698 , doi : 10.1093 / mnras / stx3304 ( oup.com [accessed November 22, 2018]).
  9. ↑ Mark Vogelsberger, Federico Marinacci, Paul Torrey, Shy Genel, Volker Springel: The uniformity and time-invariance of the intra-cluster metal distribution in galaxy clusters from the IllustrisTNG simulations . In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society . tape 474 , no. 2 , November 17, 2017, ISSN  0035-8711 , p. 2073-2093 , doi : 10.1093 / mnras / stx2955 ( oup.com [accessed November 22, 2018]).
  10. ↑ Mark Vogelsberger, Shy Genel, Debora Sijacki, Paul Torrey, Volker Springel: A model for cosmological simulations of galaxy formation physics . In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society . tape 436 , no. 4 , October 23, 2013, ISSN  1365-2966 , p. 3031–3067 , doi : 10.1093 / mnras / stt1789 ( oup.com [accessed November 22, 2018]).
  11. ↑ series. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on November 22, 2018 ; accessed on November 22, 2018 (German). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.bundesfinanzministerium.de
  12. ^ Dylan Nelson for the TNG Collaboration .: IllustrisTNG - Main. Retrieved November 22, 2018 .
  13. ^ Rainer Weinberger, Volker Springel, Lars Hernquist, Annalisa Pillepich, Federico Marinacci: Simulating galaxy formation with black hole driven thermal and kinetic feedback . In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society . tape 465 , no. 3 , November 22, 2016, ISSN  0035-8711 , p. 3291-3308 , doi : 10.1093 / mnras / stw2944 ( oup.com [accessed November 22, 2018]).
  14. ^ Adam Mann: Supercomputers Simulate the Universe in Unprecedented Detail. WIRED, July 5, 2014, accessed February 28, 2015 .
  15. ^ Cosmologists Create Largest Simulation of Galaxy Formation, Break Their Own Record . ( hlrs.de [accessed on November 22, 2018]).
  16. ↑ Mark Vogelsberger, Shy Genel, Debora Sijacki, Paul Torrey, Volker Springel: A model for cosmological simulations of galaxy formation physics . In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society . tape 436 , no. 4 , October 23, 2013, ISSN  1365-2966 , p. 3031–3067 , doi : 10.1093 / mnras / stt1789 ( oup.com [accessed November 22, 2018]).
  17. ↑ D. Nelson et al .: The illustris simulation . Public data release . In: Astronomy and Computing . tape 13 . Elsevier, 2014, ISSN  2213-1337 , pp. 12-37 .
  18. ^ Dylan Nelson for the TNG Collaboration .: IllustrisTNG - Main. Retrieved November 22, 2018 .
  19. ^ Dylan Nelson for the Illustris Collaboration .: Illustris - Press and Media Coverage. Retrieved November 25, 2018 .