Flying through a evolving cosmic structure, starting at early times (the so called dark ages), where the material in the universe is in a cold and neutral state. First objects collapse and form the first proto galaxies embedded in a heated atmosphere, hosting the first stars and QSOs. The energetic light from those stars/QSOs heat and ionize the material in the universes (note that this simulation takes this not self consistently into account, but uses a uniform, time dependent background radiation field), revealing the fine, filamentary structures formed so far. Now, lager and larger structures form within a long and violent process of merging of smaller structures leading to the largest objects observed in the present universe, the so called galaxy clusters, still connected to each other by filamentary structures. At the end, the movie zooms down to a spiral galaxy, similar to what we expect the Milky Way looks like, for a final fly-by. In this case the galaxy is artificial constructed from an astronomical image, as it is still impossible to obtain such detailed and realistic galaxies directly within cosmological simulations. This movie is also shown in the Virtual Reality facility of the new Turin Planetarium.
credit: Klaus Dolag, Claudio Gheller and Silvani Imboden
