Our physicists have created a new movie taking us back nine billion years in time to understand the formation of our Milky Way.
“Our Galaxy: a brief history” follows a Milky Way-like galaxy through its turbulent life to help us understand what it looks like today.
Available in 3D and viewed on virtual reality headsets, the movie is expected to be used in outreach with schools and the wider public.
Our Chancellor, Dr Fiona Hill, provides the voiceover for the movie, which was made using a simulation carried out on the COSMA 8 supercomputer hosted by Durham University.
The movie begins by introducing the Milky Way as it appears today before travelling back in time to observe its collision with the smaller Gaia-Enceladus galaxy.
The resulting merger helped shape the Milky Way into the galaxy we know today.
The movie then fast-forwards to the present day and highlights the galaxy’s spiral arms and bright central bar – an elongated expanse of billions of stars stretching across the galactic centre.
“Our Galaxy: a brief history” is based on simulations devised and performed by the international Auriga Superstars consortium.
The consortium’s research aims to uncover the dynamical processes behind the structure of galaxies like the Milky Way.
“Our Galaxy: a brief history” was conceived, written and produced by Dr Francesca Fragkoudi, Associate Professor in our Institute for Computational Cosmology, and Dr Mark Lovell, HPC Technical Manager, in our Department of Physics.
Schools and other organisations interested in “Our Galaxy: a brief history” should email engagement@durham.ac.uk in the first instance.
Read more about the research behind “Our Galaxy: a brief history”. Francesca is a principal investigator on the Auriga Superstars consortium.
Durham’s Institute for Computational Cosmology hosts the COSMA 8 supercomputer on behalf of the DiRAC High Performance Computing Facility. COSMA 8 is funded primarily by UK Research and Innovation, administered by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).
More about our Chancellor, Dr Fiona Hill.
Physics and Astronomy at Durham is ranked joint 67th in the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2026 and third in the UK in the Complete University Guide 2026. Visit our Physics webpages for more information on our undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.
Banner image:
At the present day, the Milky Way exhibits spiral arms and a bar in the centre. Here we have a comparable "digitial twin" galaxy that also has these two features as shown at the end of the movie. In the virtual reality version, the galaxy here appears to be so close that the viewer feels like they could touch it. Credit: Fragkoudi, Lovell and Auriga Superstars team.
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