"This is the first simulation project of its kind developed in Chile and in the region," said Patricia Tissera, director of the Center for Astrophysics and Related Technologies and leader of the project.
"Thanks to this initiative, the national scientific community can now pose and address its own questions about the universe with an independent perspective and a local identity," Tissera said.
The project, whose acronym stands for Chemo-dynamIcal propertiEs of gaLaxies and the cOsmic, aims to understand how galaxies form and evolve within their natural environment -- the cosmic web -- using their chemical properties as markers of that evolution.
It seeks to determine how different environments -- cosmic voids, filaments and walls -- influence the dynamics and composition of galaxies, offering new insights into their formation and transformation over time.
"CiELO builds virtual universes inside supercomputers -- true cosmic virtual twins -- that allow us to navigate from the Milky Way to the first galaxies in the universe," Tissera said. "This capability opens possibilities outside astronomy, in fields where simulations and modeling are essential."
The project, developed over eight years with universities in Ibero-America and international centers such as the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics and Durham University, is supported by the Center for Astrophysics and Related Technologies, which provides access to powerful computing clusters such as Geryon and helps train new researchers.
The simulations, also run at the National Laboratory for High Performance Computing at the University of Chile and the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, use tools such as GADGET-3 (GAlaxies with Dark matter and Gas intEracT) -- a code for modeling the formation and evolution of galaxies -- and SKIRT (Stellar Kinematics Including Radiative Transfer), software that simulates how light interacts with interstellar dust, to reproduce and analyze galactic evolution in detail.
The CiELO project's results are intended to complement and enhance the interpretation of data from telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope, which orbits 930,000 miles abiove Earth; the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, situated in Cerro Pachón in Chile's Coquimbo region; and the future Extremely Large Telescope, under construction on Cerro Armazones in Chile's Antofagasta region.
The project's innovative focus on galaxies in low-density environments allows researchers to study processes that have been little explored, with particular attention to chemical elements as indicators of their evolutionary history.
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