Supercomputers Allow First Detailed Milky Way Simulation

From International Business Times:

After months of number crunching on powerful supercomputers, researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Zurich have come up with a beautiful computer simulation of the physics involved in the formation of the Milky Way.

While it may at first bring to mind images you've seen on your iTunes Visualizer - and it is set to futuristic electronic music - the project took the group nearly eight months to create at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre in Manno, Switzerland. The group claims it would have taken 570 years to build the simulation on a personal computer.

The simulation, called "Eris," solves a long-standing problem that led some to question the prevailing cosmological model of our universe.
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(via RDnet)