ASTROPHYSICS

Planetesimals are kilometre-sized planetary building blocks in the early solar system. Scientists pioneered a scenario in which turbulent concentrations of the icy and dusty material leads to sufficiently large densities in which self-gravity dominates over gas shear and tidal forces of the star. As a consequence, the material collapses spontaneously under its own weight into planetesimals. Therefore, the motion of many millions of particles in magneto-hydro-dynamically and particle driven turbulence and include the gravity among gas and particles are all simulated in one huge simulation. The goal is to link the observations of dust around young stars in a quantified way to an initial mass distribution of planetesimals.

Modern simulations of galaxy formation, which simultaneously follow the co-evolution of dark matter, cosmic gas, stars, and supermassive black holes, enable us to directly calculate the observable signatures that arise from the complex process of cosmic structure formation. TNG50 is an unprecedented ‘next generation’ cosmological, magneto-hydrodynamical simulation -- the third and final volume of the IllustrisTNG project. It captures spatial scales as small as ~100 parsecs, resolving the interior structure of galaxies, and incorporates a comprehensive model for galaxy formation physics.

Scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg are using the HPC infrastructure of the Jülich Supercomputing Centre for extensive magneto-hydro-dynamical and million particle simulations of protoplanetary disks to study their evolution and properties. Findings are helping the researchers to understand the processes leading to the formation of planets, moons and asteroids. Their investigations will help to explain the observed diversity in planetary systems and in our own solar system.