A new simulation called Lumina offers unprecedented visualizations of the early universe, charting the evolution between 50 million and 2 billion years after the Big Bang. The simulation models dark matter, hot hydrogen and helium gas, and their interactions as the cosmos transitioned from a featureless expanse to containing early galaxies and black holes.
Oliver Zier, director of the Lumina project at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, explains that most prior galaxy formation knowledge comes from the nearby universe. James Webb Space Telescope data now allows comparison with Lumina's predictions to test if physical laws operated consistently across cosmic time.
The simulation reveals the cosmic dark ages, when ultraviolet light was absorbed by neutral gas, followed by ionization driven by the first stars around 100 million years after the Big Bang. Lumina modeled dark matter behavior, black hole accretion, and star formation across a 1.5 billion light-year volume using supercomputers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Key findings show starlight primarily ionized hydrogen between 500 million and 1 billion years after the Big Bang, while supermassive black holes later stripped helium's remaining electrons. The visuals include the cosmic web—a dark matter structure described as the universe's backbone—and galaxy cluster halos where infalling gas heats dramatically.
Source: New York Times Top Stories · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing