As everyone knows the only thing cooler than lasers is a blackhole—if we could just get that laser-based supercomputer doing blackhole simulations I could stop waiting for a Pink Floyd reunion tour.
Researchers are using PSC’s Cray XT3 to perform simulations that show how the large-scale structure of the universe evolved over 14 billion years. Researchers have for the first time been able to integrate black holes into these simulations:
Massive black holes are thought to have formed in the early universe and have grown in mass by swallowing large amounts of interstellar matter. Simulations by Di Matteo and colleagues with PSC’s Cray XT3 uncovered previously unknown relationships between the mass of black holes and the galaxies in which they reside and show that black holes have an important effect on the architecture and evolution of the cosmos.
…[Carnegie Mellon University astrophysicist Tiziana] Di Matteo and her colleagues first applied this approach to two colliding galaxies with black holes at their centers, which revealed new behavior when the black holes were included. The success of the simulation led to a paper in the prestigious science journal Nature.
The full story at PSC’s website has pics and a movie.
For the next best thing to a Pink Floyd reunion, you could always check out Roger Waters on his Dark Side of the Moon tour this summer: http://www.pinkfloydz.com/roger2007/main.htm
But I’m a greedy guy: I want the whole enchilada.