New model bears a baby Milky Way: state-of-the-art simulation shows galaxy formation in high-res.

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BLOIS, France -- Like a proud papa showing off a picture of his newborn, cosmologist Ben Moore of the University of Zurich displayed an image of a galaxy that he says looks just like an infant Milky Way.

These days, with the sharp eye of Hubble and other telescopes, that may not sound like much of a feat. But the image Moore unveiled June 23 at the Windows on the Universe meeting was produced by a supercomputer and is the highest-resolution simulation ever attempted of a galaxy's assembly.

Moore and his colleagues put in all the raw ingredients and detailed interactions that are generally agreed to be essential for galaxy formation. "The complexity we find is very beautiful," Moore says. As time unfolded, the simulation, which begins shortly after the Big Bang and ends when the universe is about 2 billion years old, produced a spiral galaxy akin in mass and shape to a young Milky Way.