Peering into the cosmic web

Scientists use computers to simulate the structure and evolution of our universe.

By Richard Talcott

Published: March 29, 2010

A snapshot of today's universe.

Photo by Volker Springel (MPIA) et al.

The universe contains more than 100 billion galaxies, each of which can hold more than 100 billion stars. And those galaxies stretch off in every direction to near infinity (or at least for 13 billion light-years). To figure out how all this structure formed and evolved, scientists rely on supercomputers to perform the calculations.

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