Miguel Aragón-Calvo, a visiting assistant researcher in the university’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, has been studying the formation of the universe for a long time. Currently, he is trying to understand galaxies and their place in the “cosmic web,” which he describes in terms that sound oddly familiar if you’ve spent any time with a 3D printer.
“Galaxies are not isolated objects,” he says. “They are connected through filaments of gas and matter. This gas is injected inside the galaxies through filaments. We see these galaxies forming stars very early. They are forming many stars. And then suddenly, they stop forming the stars. But we don’t know how this happens exactly. I want to identify structures in time.”
“These problems in cosmology are very difficult to visualize, even using computer graphics,” he says. “By 3D-printing them I am able to interact directly with the models and ‘see’ the problem at once. In some cases this results in ‘eureka’ moments. Tridimensional cosmic structures can be easily identified and tracked as four-dimensional objects where time is taken as another spatial variable. Even though I had visualized the cosmic web many times before in the computer screen, the solution only became obvious once I held the model in my hand.”
“I often ‘play’ with 3D models of galaxies in their early stages in order to get new ideas on how gas gets injected into them to produce stars,” Aragón-Calvo said. “This has been very helpful in developing a model of galaxy formation that I will soon submit to a peer-reviewed journal.”
Not only has Aragón-Calvo 3D printed the galaxies, he has also, in a way, 3D printed the most intangible thing of all: time. While the aerospace industry is preparing to send people farther into space than ever before, it’s humbling to realize how much about the origins of the universe can be discovered from right here on Earth.