The multi-component nature of the cosmos

This movie is designed to highlight that the cosmos is comprised of different forms of coincident matter, that interact with each other in a variety of ways. The movie starts by showing the collapse of cold dark matter (CDM) at early cosmic epochs, to establish the cosmic web. It then transitions to show the gas that collapses with the CDM on large-scales, before zooming in to show how gas cools into a rotating disc at the centre of a dark matter halo. Stars forming within this disc drive the explosive outflows that are periodically visible in the gas. The movie then transitions to show the distribution of stars that have condensed out of the gas into a young "disc + bulge" structure, seen at roughly half of the age of the Universe (7 billion years after the Big Bang). The movie than transitions back to show the evolution of the gas over another 7 billion years, highlighting how infalling satellite galaxies deliver streams of gas onto the rotating disc. The movie then shows the final stellar distribution of the galaxy at the present day, 14 billion years after the Big Bang, before zooming out to show the large-scale distribution of gas and CDM. The final view highlights how simulations like EAGLE must follow the evolution of many thousands of galaxies at once.