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Marcelo Alvarez

Postdoctoral Fellow
Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics
research interests: computational cosmology; first stars and black holes; reionization; 21-cm observations of the EOR; galaxy formation; physics of the IGM; large-scale structure of the universe

Movies

send questions, comments, or requests to:
malvarez 'at' cita.utoronto.ca



Fly-through of a large volume of the universe at z=14.

Visualization by M. Alvarez
Simulation by M. Alvarez, T. Abel, L. Sales, R. Thomas, and J. Wise




Visualization of the progress of reionization in a 1 Gpc/h volume. Ionized regions are blue and translucent, ionization fronts are red and white, and neutral regions are dark and opaque. A random sampling of 5 per cent (about 40,000) of all the halos at z = 0 are shown in yellow. Reionization is still quite inhomogeneous on these large scales, with large regions ionizing long before others.

Visualization by M. Alvarez and Ralf Kaehler
See Alvarez et al. (2009) for more details on the simulations.



The movie shows the universe as seen from an observer in the top-left corner, with the last-scattering surface - from which the cosmic microwave background (CMB) originates at redshift of z=1100 - seen as the inner edge of the outermost white ring. The outer edge of the ring corresponds to the big bang at time=0, indicating that the observable universe is finite in size - about 14 Gpc, or 40 billion light-years in radius. Since the universe has a flat geometry, all the angular sizes shown here are correct, because the map corresponds to the "comoving" distance from the observer, indicating the location of the material at the present time. This is why the entire observable universe is currently 40 billion light-years in radius, even though the light has only been travelling for about 13.7 billion years since the big bang.

The movie then zooms in to a point at a redshift of about z=30, hundreds of millions of years after the big bang. As we fly toward the observer, the universe gets more and more ionized and his heated. Hot is shown as white, about 20,000 degrees Kelvin, while black is cold, neutral gas. Inhomogenous reionization leaves behind a complex post-reionization temperature morphology, since the first regions to ionize in fact are the coolest.

Visualization by M. Alvarez
See Alvarez & Abel (2010) for more details on the simulations.


Accretion onto the first stellar-mass black hole. The movie begins 208 million years after the universe formed and focuses on a star on the verge of collapse to a black hole (white, revealed by its X-rays). Gas clouds (blue) blown away by the star's intense light carve out a cavity that keeps the black hole from feeding.

Visualization by M. Alvarez and T. Abel
Simulation by M. Alvarez, J. Wise, and T. Abel
See Alvarez, Wise & Abel (2009) for more details on the simulations.
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Mailing address:

CITA
60 St. George St.
Toronto ON M5S 3H8
Canada

Office and Contact Info:

McLennan Physical Laboratories, Room 1302
Tel: 416 978 8801
Fax: 416 978 3921
E-mail: malvarez 'at' cita.utoronto.ca