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Modeling Supernovae With a Supercomputer
A team of scientists at the University of Chicago will be using 22 million processor-hours to simulate the physics of exploding stars. The team will make use of the Blue Gene/P supercomputer at Argonne National Laboratory to analyze four different scenarios for type Ia supernovae. Included in the link is a video simulation of a thermonuclear flame busting its way out of a white dwarf. The processing time was made possible by the Department of Energy's INCITE program.
"Burning in a white dwarf can occur as a deflagration or as a detonation. 'Imagine a pool of gasoline and throw a match on it. That kind of burning across the pool of gasoline is a deflagration,' Jordan said. 'A detonation is simply if you were to light a stick of dynamite and allow it to explode.' In the Flash Center scenario, deflagration starts off-center of the star's core. The burning creates a hot bubble of less dense ash that pops out the side due to buoyancy, like a piece of Styrofoam submerged in water."
blimey, i was expecting them to use prayer, because that has been proven to work unlike these so called 'computers', which according to Ben Stein the nazi's used
I'm a rabbit startled by the headlights of life
I bet he could make a neater looking explosion without the use of a super computer. It'd even have audio!
Well, I'm a pyromaniac and I consider this stimulation.
modeling with supercomputers should be called "supermodeling" from now on