Shocks in the Illustris Simulation

Illustris is a state-of-the-art computer simulation of the evolution of our universe on cosmological scales, created with the moving-mesh code AREPO. Around 8000 cores on supercomputers in France and Germany were kept busy for 3 months propagating 10^10 resolution elements in a periodic box having 350 million light years on a side. Illustris starts shortly after the big bang and models the evolution of gas, dark matter, stars, and black holes up to today (redshift z=0). In this movie, the hydrodynamic shocks of the gas are revealed in a dense sub-volume of the Illustris simulation. Shocks originate from the non-linearity of the Euler equations and play a crucial role in the structure formation of the large-scale universe. At early times (high redshift z), cold gas flows onto the cosmic web and gets shocked, thereby transforming kinetic into thermal energy and heating the universe. At around z=6 the universe is reionized and the background temperature rises to 10^4 Kelvin. This process increases the pre