Source: The Advocate
It’s something that happens all the time, but nobody ever sees: the collision of two black holes in space.
LSU students and researchers have created an award- winning computer simulation of such a collision and the gravitational waves the event would generate.
The simulation is just one practical, “real world” application of a computer program the students and researchers have created using super computers to solve complex problems, said LSU Center for Computation and Technology professor Gabrielle Allen.
Center students and professors won first prize at the SCALE 2009 challenge at CCGrid09, a conference for cluster and grid computing.
The competition took place in Shanghai, China, where LSU beat four other groups of finalists, Allen said.
With the exception of one member of the LSU team who is from China, the students and researchers were not able to travel to China to give the presentation.
Instead, the LSU group put together a video presentation that was sent to China via a computer and members of the team communicated to the judges from LSU using a live computer chat to describe the process and answer questions.
Creating the computer visualization of two black holes colliding was only a fraction of the project, Allen said.
The project was the culmination of a mix of astrophysics, computer science and mathematical work involving equations written by Albert Einstein that are so complex, they can’t be written down on paper, Allen said.
Allen and LSU physics professor Erik Schnetter said it has taken almost 15 years to complete the computer program.
The National Science Foundation has funded much of the work Allen and Schnetter’s team has done.
Schnetter said the LSU team is one of six or seven in the world working on the problem of how a black hole collision affects distortions in space and time.
“We’ve opened a window on something we’ve never seen before,” Allen said about the black hole collision work.
The LSU team was able to automatically generate the simulation program by developing other computer programs and software to provide fast data transfer across the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative or LONI. The team members also were able to convert scientific data into images by using the complex computer program.
Besides using super computers at LSU, the team ran the black hole simulation through a computer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center in Austin.
Allen said the computer program the team created will be used to produce a comprehensive visualization model of the coast of Louisiana to assist the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in coping with coastal erosion issues.
The LSU team is also working with the U.S. Department of Energy to help model oil and gas flows which will help determine the best places to drill for new energy sources.
LSU Center for Computing and Technology Interim Director Stephen David Beck said in a news release, “It was a great experience for us to be able to demonstrate (LSU) university research to our international peers at a venue across the world, so we can show them the groundbreaking processes taking place through work at LSU that are advancing opportunities for the global scientific community.”
To watch a video recording of the team’s demonstration, visit http://preview.cactuscode.org/media/videos/.
Publish Date:
06-07-2009
