PITTSBURGH -- By incorporating the physics of black holes into a highly sophisticated model running on a powerful supercomputing system, an international team of scientists has produced an unprecedented simulation of cosmic evolution that verifies and deepens our understanding of relationships between black holes and the galaxies in which they reside. Called BHCosmo, the simulation shows that black holes are integral to the structure of the cosmos and may help guide users of future telescopes, showing them what to look for as they aim to locate the earliest cosmic events and untangle the history of the universe. The research team is led by Carnegie Mellon University and includes scientists from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany. The research is in press with The Astrophysical Journal (
http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/0705.2269).
“Ours is the first simulation to incorporate black hole physics,” said Tiziana Di Matteo, a theoretical cosmologist and associate professor of physics at the Mellon College of Science at Carnegie Mellon. “It is very computationally challenging, involving more calculations than any prior similar modeling of the cosmos, and the result offers us the best picture to date of how the cosmos formed.”
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