* Astronomy

A new simulation method recently developed by Stanford astrophysicist Marcelo Alvarez and Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship student Patrick Ho spurns complexity to make headway in understanding the early universe's structure formation. Collapsing a complicated trajectory into a single relationship, their calculations cut simulation time from weeks to hours.
Short of trace amounts of helium, in early times there was only neutral (non-ionised) hydrogen. Simplicity, monotonyit matters little what one attributes to such a state: the smooth swathe that existed soon after the universe cooled from the Big Bangs hot mess of free electrons and energetic radiation is termed by astrophysicists the cosmological "dark ages." The preponderance of neutral hydrogen absorbed enough light to make this era all but opaque.

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