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Hydrodynamics of Cosmological Sheets - 3D: Caption

Cold Dark Matter & Gas: Gas Temperature Evolution

These simulations were performed at a resolution of 256^3 zones on a Connection Machine 5 using the the KRONOS code that had been tested in earlier 2-D simulations depicted above. The first two movies depict calculations that modelled the gravitational interactions of "cold" dark matter and baryonic gas in a a grid volume containing 17 million cells, evolving the cosmos from initial conditions that were determined by recent observations of the cosmic microwave background.

The gas density animation shows that large-scale structure emerges as intersecting filaments. These filaments represent sheets of galaxies spanning upwards of 100 million light years end-to-end. Galaxies cluster at the intersections that range in length from 1-10 million light years.

In the gas temperature movie, red regions indicate the hottest gas. Accumulating at the intersections of the filaments, this gas is thought to emit high-energy radiation, especially X-rays, making it possible for the first time to compare the simulated results with actual observations of galaxy clusters.

The third movie shows a the evolution of gas density in a simulation which incorporate both "hot" and "cold" dark matter (i.e. "mixed dark matter") and which was performed at a considerably higher resolution (513^3 zones).

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Copyright, (c) 1995: Board of Trustees, University of Illinois

NCSA. Last modified, 10/18/95