GoKawiilHarvard-Smithsonian team unveils Lumina Project, largest early-universe simulation to date
Researchers at the Center for Astrophysics, a Harvard-Smithsonian collaboration, published the Lumina Project in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, modeling the first 2 billion years of cosmic history across a cube about 1.5 billion light-years wide. The simulation was run on Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Frontier supercomputer using roughly 15,000 of its 37,000 GPUs, surpassing the 2022 Thesan simulation in both scale and timespan covered.
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The larger volume and finer detail could let scientists test theories about how matter, dark matter and radiation interacted in the universe's infancy, including processes like helium reionization. Because the model draws on James Webb Space Telescope observations of ancient objects, it may help researchers calibrate simulations against real data rather than theory alone, strengthening confidence in cosmological models going forward.
- Lumina Project models the universe's first 2 billion years across a 1.5-billion-light-year cube.
- It was built using about 15,000 GPUs on the Frontier supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
- It surpasses the 2022 Thesan simulation in scale, incorporating data informed by James Webb Space Telescope observations.
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Published there as: “This New Simulation of the Early Universe Is Massive, Detailed and Gorgeous”
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