News

Supercomputer to help reveal secrets of the Universe

(24 June 2011)

Dark matter

Cosmologists at a leading international research centre hope a new £1.9m supercomputer will help reveal the origins and make-up of the Universe.

The Cosmology Machine Supercomputer (COSMA 4) will be officially opened at Durham University's world-leading Institute for Computational Cosmology (ICC) on Friday, June 24 by a representative from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

The COSMA 4 has a memory of 15.4 terabytes or 15,400 gigabytes - the equivalent of 7,500 home PCs. The disk storage capacity is one petabyte or 1,000,000 gigabytes.

Scientists hope the machine will enable them to build upon the already groundbreaking work of the ICC which specialises in producing computer simulations of the evolution of the Universe and its galaxies, including the Milky Way, to enable researchers to understand why the Universe behaves as it does.

Among the theories the ICC will be testing is that of dark matter - a mysterious substance which scientists believe is required to explain galaxy motions that would otherwise violate the laws of physics.

The researchers' simulations will also aid the investigation of the accelerated expansion of the Universe which scientists believe is driven by a mysterious and poorly understood force - "dark energy".

The Institute for Computational Cosmology (ICC) is a leading international centre for research into the origin and evolution of the Universe, addressing some of the most fundamental questions in science, such as how did the Universe begin and how did it evolve to its current state.

Invited guests at Friday's launch will hear about the science behind COSMA 4 and will watch the award-winning 3D movie Cosmic Origins which was produced by the ICC and the University's School of Engineering and Computing Sciences using the predecessor of the new supercomputer.

Based on previous simulations, the movie shows how the very early Universe would have appeared 500 million years after the Big Bang and how it evolved into today's amazing tapestry of galaxies and clusters.

Funding for the new supercomputer has been provided by The Science and Technology Facilities Council and Durham University.

Professor Carlos Frenk, Director of the Institute for Computational Cosmology, said: "Durham and its research partners across the world are at the forefront of research into the composition and evolution of the Universe.

"The technology available to us through COSMA 4 will ensure that we can continue to advance in our quest to figure out how the Universe works.

"There is much to play for: the identity of the dark matter and the dark energy for starters, and thanks to these amazing technological advances, we hope to  be able to shed light on some of the most fundamental unsolved questions in physics today."