Launch Catch-Up — Research Published October 26, 2026
Researchers from MIT, Harvard and partner institutions presented Lumina, a computer simulation tracing the early universe’s evolution across approximately two billion years.
MIT’s October 26 announcement says the work appears in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. The simulation follows dark matter, gas, stars and radiation through a region approximately 500 megaparsecs, or 1.6 billion light-years, across.
The model tracks hydrogen and helium reionization, periods when energetic radiation stripped electrons from atoms. Its results attribute hydrogen’s transformation mainly to early galaxies and stars, while active supermassive black holes supplied the more energetic radiation driving helium’s transformation.
The team ran calculations on the Frontier supercomputer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and is making the simulation available for scientific comparisons.
Lumina produces modeled histories, rather than direct observations of individual early galaxies. Researchers intend to compare its predictions with telescope surveys to test their account of how cosmic structures formed. Agreement or disagreement with observations will help assess the assumptions underlying the simulation.
Sources: MIT Physics, October 26: https://physics.mit.edu/news/watch-the-universe-emerge-from-the-dark-ages-with-lumina/