Scientists have been able to run a simulation of “Thesan” to help explain the radiation of the first light in the universe.
According to a report published by Science Alert, the Thesan simulation relies on realistic models of galaxies formation based on an algorithm to reproduce how light interacts with surrounding gas, and a model of cosmic dust.
These simulations are the most detailed that give a picture of how early galaxies formed, how they interacted with the gases of the universe at that time, and how light began to leak.
Aaron Smith, of the Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the simulation was a “bridge to the early universe”.
He added that this simulation is ideal for finding out the reasons for the origin of the universe, and for observing the upcoming changes.
There was a time when the universe was nothing more than an opaque sea of swirling gases, but by a billion years old all of this had changed, as radiation from stars caused a drastic change allowing light to flow freely across the electromagnetic spectrum.
He added that most of what we know about the universe we learned from light, so when the light is obstructed in some way, this causes some problems such as black holes that do not emit any detectable radiation.
The simulation attempts to recreate the “cosmic dawn” that arose about a billion years after the Big Bang, when the universe was before that filled with fog and gas that was causing the scattering of free electrons.
Once the universe began to cool, the protons and electrons began to recombine to form neutral hydrogen atoms, which allowed light to travel through space.
And the universe entered the era of reionization when the first stars and galaxies began to form, about 150 million years after the Big Bang.