First glimpse into birth of the Milky Way
August 25, 2011
Category: CSCS
The world's first realistic simulation of the formation of the Milky Way has been achieved by a group of astrophysicists at University of Zurich with the help of CSCS supercomputing resources.
For almost 20 years astrophysicists have been trying to recreate the formation of spiral galaxies such as our Milky Way realistically. Now astrophysicists from the University of Zurich present the world´s first realistic simulation of the formation of our home galaxy together with astronomers from the University of California at Santa Cruz. The new results were partly calculated on the computer of the Swiss National Supercomputing Center (CSCS) and show, for instance, that there has to be stars on the outer edge of the Milky Way.