Megatron simulation: the Milky Way formed from thousands of galaxies

A three-year supercomputer simulation called Megatron shows that in the first 2 billion years after the Big Bang, the region that became the Milky Way was a swarm of thousands of small galaxies that later merged. The results, published Sept. 30 in six papers in The Open Journal of Astrophysics, aim to reconcile models with JWST observations.

• The simulation spans 180 million to 2 billion years after the Big Bang
• Megatron predicts galaxy spectra for direct comparison with JWST data
• The model tracks the deaths of the first stars and the forging of carbon, oxygen and iron
• The next generation will add active black holes in the early universe