Synthetic universe lets scientists hear galaxies' birth and growth across cosmic time

Scientists behind the COLIBRE project created synthetic universes that simulate galaxy formation from the first billion years after the Big Bang, modeling cold gas and dust physics on Durham’s COSMA8 supercomputer. The virtual galaxies reproduce many properties seen by the James Webb Space Telescope and reinforce the Lambda Cold Dark Matter cosmology, while also offering new audio-visual ways to explore cosmic evolution. The work, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, highlights progress and also ongoing mysteries JWST has revealed, such as enigmatic faint red dots that COLIBRE can’t yet explain.