Astrophysics
If we really want to know where we came from and where we’re going, we must look to the universe beyond our own world, a fantastic realm of stars and galaxies, breathtaking beauty, and unimaginable calamity.
The job requires earth’s most powerful supercomputers to examine scales ranging from the smallest subatomic particles to the largest galaxies. Researchers are using leadership computing systems at the National Center for Computational Sciences to solve some profound riddles. These include stellar explosions that provided the building blocks of life and tell us invaluable information about our universe, dark matter that is undetectable yet holds galaxies together, and merging galactic black holes that provide the most powerful gravity waves in the universe. The knowledge this research provides will help us understand who and what we are.
Astrophysics Projects
Multidimensional Simulations of Core Collapse Supernovae
- PI: Anthony Mezzacappa, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
- Jaguar: 16,000,000 hours
First Principles Models of Type Ia Supernovae
- PI: Stan Woosley, University of California, Santa Cruz
- Jaguar: 3,500,000 hours
Numerical Relativity Simulations of Binary Black Holes and Gravitational Radiation
- PI: Joan Centrella, National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- Jaguar: 1,000,000 hours
