The Virgo Consortium

Consortium

A consortium is an association of two or more individuals, companies, organizations or governments with the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources for achieving a common goal....

was founded in 1994 for Cosmological Supercomputer Simulations

N-body simulation

An N-body simulation is a simulation of a dynamical system of particles, usually under the influence of physical forces, such as gravity . In cosmology, they are used to study processes of non-linear structure formation such as the process of forming galaxy filaments and galaxy halos from dark...

in response to the UK's High Performance Computing Initiative

High-performance computing

High-performance computing uses supercomputers and computer clusters to solve advanced computation problems. Today, computer systems approaching the teraflops-region are counted as HPC-computers.-Overview:...

. Virgo developed rapidly into an international collaboration between dozen scientists in the UK, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, USA and Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

Nodes

The largest nodes

Node (networking)

In communication networks, a node is a connection point, either a redistribution point or a communication endpoint . The definition of a node depends on the network and protocol layer referred to...

 are the Institute for Computational Cosmology in the UK and the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany. Other nodes exist in the UK, Netherlands, Canada, USA and Japan.

Science Goals

The science goals are to carry out state-of-the-art cosmological simulations with research areas in:

• The large-scale distribution of dark matter
  Dark matter
  In astronomy and cosmology, dark matter is matter that neither emits nor scatters light or other electromagnetic radiation, and so cannot be directly detected via optical or radio astronomy...
  
  
• The formation of dark matter halos
  Dark matter halo
  A dark matter halo is a hypothetical component of a galaxy, which extends beyond the edge of the visible galaxy and dominates the total mass. Since they consist of dark matter, halos cannot be observed directly, but their existence is inferred through their effects on the motions of stars and gas...
  
  
• The formation and evolution of galaxies and clusters
  Galaxy formation and evolution
  The study of galaxy formation and evolution is concerned with the processes that formed a heterogeneous universe from a homogeneous beginning, the formation of the first galaxies, the way galaxies change over time, and the processes that have generated the variety of structures observed in nearby...
  
  
• The physics of the intergalactic medium
• The properties of the intracluster gas
  Intracluster medium
  In astronomy, the intracluster medium is the superheated plasma present at the center of a galaxy cluster. This is gas heated to temperatures of between roughly 10 and 100 megakelvins and consisting mainly of ionised hydrogen and helium, containing most of the baryonic material in the cluster...
  
  

Projects

• The Millennium Simulation
• Galaxy Simulations
• First Objects
  Timeline of the Big Bang
  This timeline of the Big Bang describes the history of the universe according to the prevailing scientific theory of how the universe came into being, using the cosmological time parameter of comoving coordinates...
  
  
• Dark Matter Halos
• Intergalactic Medium
• Semi-Analytical Galaxy Formation
• Hubble Volume
• Mock Catalogues
• GIF Project

The Millennium Simulation

This N-body simulation used more than 10 billion particles to trace the evolution of the matter distribution in a cubic region of the Universe

Universe

The Universe is commonly defined as the totality of everything that exists, including all matter and energy, the planets, stars, galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space. Definitions and usage vary and similar terms include the cosmos, the world and nature...

 over 2 billion light-years on a side. The first results that were published in 2005 in an issue of Nature

Nature (journal)

Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...

, shows how comparing such simulated data to large observational surveys can improve the understanding of the physical processes underlying the buildup of real galaxies and black holes.

Member Countries & Institutes

University of Cambridge

University of Cambridge

The University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...

, University of Durham, University of Edinburgh

University of Edinburgh

The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1583, is a public research university located in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The university is deeply embedded in the fabric of the city, with many of the buildings in the historic Old Town belonging to the university...

, University of Nottingham

University of Nottingham

The University of Nottingham is a public research university based in Nottingham, United Kingdom, with further campuses in Ningbo, China and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia...

 and the University of Sussex

University of Sussex

The University of Sussex is an English public research university situated next to the East Sussex village of Falmer, within the city of Brighton and Hove. The University received its Royal Charter in August 1961....

: Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics

Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics

The Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics is a Max Planck Institute, located in Garching, near Munich, Bavaria, Germany. It was founded as Max Planck Institute for Physics and Astrophysics in 1958 and split up into the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics and the Max Planck Institute for Physics...

: Leiden University

Leiden University

Leiden University , located in the city of Leiden, is the oldest university in the Netherlands. The university was founded in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange, leader of the Dutch Revolt in the Eighty Years' War. The royal Dutch House of Orange-Nassau and Leiden University still have a close...

: McMaster University

McMaster University

McMaster University is a public research university whose main campus is located in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is located on of land in the residential neighbourhood of Westdale, adjacent to Hamilton's Royal Botanical Gardens...

 and Queen's University

Queen's University

Queen's University, , is a public research university located in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Founded on 16 October 1841, the university pre-dates the founding of Canada by 26 years. Queen's holds more more than of land throughout Ontario as well as Herstmonceux Castle in East Sussex, England...

: Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University

Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....