Supercomputer to unravel mystery of creation
By IANSWednesday, February 2, 2011
LONDON - Scientists have unveiled a new supercomputer to reveal secrets of how the universe originated.
SCIAMA, backed by the power of 1,000 desktops, has been installed at the University of Portsmouth to receive and process large amounts of astronomical data.
It is capable of doing a billion calculations every second and will be used to expand our knowledge of galaxies and gravity.
Researchers at the university’s Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation (ICG) will use the supercomputer to simulate vast regions of the universe, investigate the properties of hundreds of millions of galaxies and solve complex cosmological problems.
Gary Burton, ICG’s senior specialist technician, will be responsible for managing the supercomputer, reports the Daily Mail.
He said: “SCIAMA is a cluster of computers linked together to make a far more powerful machine.
“It can do a billion calculations each second and follow the movement of billions of particles in a simulation.
“The huge power of a supercomputer like SCIAMA is necessary to deal with the vast amount of observational data coming from satellites, telescopes and other detectors.”
