Here's some examples:
The Milky Way as represented in Elite

angerous. The procedurally generated galaxy shown here has 400 billion stars. The known stars and exoplanets (and new discoveries) are added by hand. But that represents an incredibly small number of the total. The rest are 'predicted' using complex algorithms and generated by a piece of software called the Stellar Forge. It basically runs the history of the galaxy through 400 billion years of stellar evolution.
The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy and is known to be larger than average. I love the fact that in a billion years time it will collide with its closest neighbour Andromeda. Will our descendants (no longer human, but of human origin) still be around to see it. I hope so.
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