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(Blender) Cosmology with Geometry Nodes

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Why This Matters

This article highlights how Blender's Geometry Nodes can be leveraged for scientific visualization in cosmology, particularly in studying the Cosmic Microwave Background. Such innovative applications demonstrate the potential for advanced, accessible tools to enhance scientific research and data interpretation, benefiting both researchers and the broader tech industry. It underscores the importance of interdisciplinary approaches that combine art, science, and technology to push the boundaries of understanding complex phenomena.

Key Takeaways

By MohammadHossein Jamshidi, Ph.D student of Physics/Cosmology at Shahid Beheshti University, Iran.

I’m a Ph.D student of Physics/Cosmology at Shahid Beheshti University. I have also been an animation engineer in the game industry since 2012. You may find some of my works on my GitHub.

Here I share some of the ideas and techniques of using Blender during my research in cosmology. Although these are specifically used in cosmology, I am confident that similar ideas apply to other areas of science. All the files shown here are available for free on this GitHub repository.

What is Cosmology and what do I do?

Cosmology is the science of studying the physical world on gigantic scales, both in size and time; so large that a galaxy could be considered as a single point, and so long that a millennium could be taken as just one frame of time!

My interest in the world of cosmology lies in Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation, the light rays that reach us from the very early universe. The CMB has a temperature of about 2.7 Kelvin (around -270 degrees Celsius) and is nearly uniform across the sky; however, it has some tiny fluctuations (of size 10 − 6 ^{-6} to 10 − 4 ^{-4} K) across the sky which contain very fascinating information from the early definable times, and also the history of the universe. These light rays are quite the last things that we can observe in the sky, coming from the farthest distance that could ever be observed. They have recorded numerous events in the history of the universe, and now we are fortunate enough to be able to decode some of their interesting information.

Cosmic Microwave Background temperature map

Credit: ESA and the Planck Collaboration

Inspirations to use Geo Nodes for Cosmology

The early ideas to use Blender for Cosmology were enlightened in my mind from the creative and delightful works of Seanterelle on YouTube. I was impressed by his nice simulations with Geo Nodes that had eye-catching performance, and I tried to use Geometry Nodes for cosmological computations.

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