The universe in a supercomputer

When it comes to reconstructing the past, you might think that astrophysicists have it easy. After all, the sky is awash with evidence. For most of the universe's history, space has been largely transparent, so much so that light emitted by distant galaxies can travel for billions of years before finally reaching Earth. It might seem that all researchers have to do to find out what the universe looked like, say, 10 billion years ago is to build a telescope sensitive enough to pick up that ancient light. Actually, it's more complicated than that.