Astronomers and supercomputers just created a virtual universe that looks like the real thing

A team of astronomers has created the most realistic simulation of our universe ever made — a 14-billion-year history that took months of work by supercomputers to render.

Observing the universe directly is great, but sometimes an object or event is too far away, or happened too long ago (which amount to the same thing in many ways) to watch. That’s why astronomers and physicists rely on simulations using known data and laws to produce virtual galaxies and black holes, watching them and comparing the results to real life.

The most accurate and high-resolution of these simulations, called Illustris, has just been completed by a team from MIT and Harvard. They set 8,000 CPUs to work for three months, and the result is satisfyingly realistic.