it's Magnetohydrodynamics Monday!

February 7, 2022 1:22 PM

STARFORGE uses Meshless Finite Mass MHD method in conjunction with GIZMO's various radiative transfer solvers to resolve the formation, motion, and feedback from individual stars forming in GMCs. I don't know what that means either, but here's an incredibly rad visualization it made of some kind of cosmic super soaker fight and a gorgeous fly-around of the aftermath.
posted by theodolite (5 comments total)

but can it simulate a caterpillar drive?
posted by Dr. Twist at 2:03 PM on February 7, 2022 [1 favorite]

This is cool. I always feel a little guilty that these amazing simulation setups have so many applications but ultimately most people (myself included) can't be bothered unless it looks awesome too. Fortunately they can do that as well... just takes a little extra and probably any scientists involved are like, "hypothesis sustained! Well, better do one that looks cool to the mundanes..."
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 2:34 PM on February 7, 2022

beautiful. needs farty soundtrack
posted by 20 year lurk at 3:49 PM on February 7, 2022

Our universe is spectacularly beautiful, full of fire, the bigger mind.
posted by Oyéah at 4:15 PM on February 7, 2022

SF simulations that do not integrate stellar orbits explicitly generally discretize the stellar mass formed into a collisionless fluid represented by gravitationally-softened particles, which can produce qualitatively-correct star cluster density profiles, but have the severe limitation that the collisionless description (and phase-space density conservation) breaks down on mass scales 𝑀_★ ≲ 100𝑀_⊙, so if cluster formation is a hierarchical assembly from smaller masses, then individual stellar dynamics is always important at some stage in the process.

Well obviously.
posted by dephlogisticated at 4:20 PM on February 7, 2022