lss-lab
Interactive visualization and animation tools for large-scale structure — cosmological simulations and galaxy surveys. Making the physics of the cosmic web tangible.
Tools
The Cosmic Web Sandbox→
An interactive, in-browser cosmic web you reshape with cosmological dials. Gaussian field, FFTs, and Lagrangian perturbation theory run client-side, so the controls respond in real time.
Gravity vs Expansion→
The growth of large-scale structure as a tug of war: gravity amplifies primordial wrinkles into the cosmic web while cosmic expansion drags against it. Same initial conditions, three cosmologies — scrub cosmic time and watch who wins.
Sound and Light Waves→
Both are waves, but only one needs stuff to travel through. Flip the medium from air to vacuum and watch the sound wave die as its particles vanish, while light keeps crossing the empty space.
Anatomy of a Light Wave→
Toggle between two pictures of light. First the electric field as an arrow at every point in space; then that field joined by a magnetic one at right angles, the two locked in step as a wave that carries itself through empty space.
How Fast Is Light?→
Follow one pulse of light in real time, from the Moon to the edge of the observable Universe. Its speed never changes — but as the distances explode across seven scales, the same light feels instant, then slow, then almost frozen.
Light from the Distant Past→
A looping lecture animation: one continuous zoom from Earth at night to the cosmic microwave background, with distance and lookback time climbing together. Looking farther into space is looking farther back in time.
How We Infer Model Parameters→
Every point in parameter space predicts a clustering spectrum. Draw one, compare it against a single fixed observation, then repeat — poor matches fade, good ones accumulate, and a plausible region emerges. A visual account of how the numbers behind a cosmology get pinned down by data.