News 2017
NAS Supports Research Leading to Nobel Prize Work in the Discovery of Gravitational Waves
NAS Division experts created beautiful visualizations and provided resources to support NASA research that solved a longstanding problem: how to produce full simulations of orbiting and merging black holes. In his December 8 Nobel Lecture, Kip S. Thorne, co-winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics for the development of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) and the 2016 detection of gravitational waves, acknowledged the ground-breaking work that led to these simulations, which helped researchers determine what gravitational radiation signals would look like.
See details about the gravitational wave simulations and download animations
NAS Division Staff Present at 2017 Fall AGU Meeting
Researchers from the NAS Division at NASA Ames Research Center join staff from other NASA centers and partner organizations to present their latest advances in Earth science and heliophysics, enabled by new high-performance tools and methods, at the 2017 American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall meeting, December 11-15 in New Orleans.
Recently Expanded, NASA’s First Modular Supercomputer Ranks 15th in the U.S. on TOP500 List
Electra ranks 15th in the U.S. and 33rd worldwide on the November 2017 TOP500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers, as announced November 13 at SC17 in Denver.
NASA to Showcase Science and Technology Advancements at SC17
NASA is challenging the boundaries of science, discovery, and technology with help from its powerful supercomputers. Explore some of the latest discoveries and innovations that inspire people around the world—all being showcased at SC17 in Denver, November 13–16.
New Podcast Features NAS Coder Bron Nelson and Ocean Researcher Dimitris Menemenlis
NAS programmer extraordinaire Bron Nelson teams with NASA JPL scientist Dimitris Menemenlis to explain the essential role of our supercomputers and hyperwall in exploring complex simulations of Earth’s oceans and sea ice.
NASA Researcher Wins CFD Flow Visualization Award
A visualization showing a novel method for computing the adjoint sensitivity in simulations of turbulent flow in "eddy," a specialized research software developed at NASA's Ames Research Center, was the recipient of the award for Most Quantitatively Descriptive Flow Visualization Animation at the 2017 AIAA Aviation Forum and Exhibition.
NASA Supercomputing Strategy Takes the Road Less Traveled
For a large institution playing at the leadership-class supercomputing level, NASA tends to do things a little differently than its national lab and academic peers. NAS Advanced Computing Branch Chief Bill Thigpen explains the benefits of taking the modular route at NASA's Ames Research Center, starting with the Electra supercomputer.
Read more about the benefits of modular supercomputing at NAS
First Quantum Annealing Computer in the U.S. to Have More Than 2000 Qubits Installed and Operational
The Universities Space Research Association (USRA), as part of an ongoing joint collaboration with NASA and Google Inc. to operate a Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, has upgraded its current quantum annealing computer to a D-Wave 2000Q system. The newly upgraded system resides at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Facility.
Dino-killing Asteroid Could Have Thrust Earth into Two Years of Darkness
A new study by National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) scientists looks at the short-term effects of a massive asteroid strike 66 millions years ago, which could have dramatically changed Earth’s climate. Simulations were run on supercomputers at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing facility and NCAR.
Read more about the new study of the ancient asteroid strike, featuring simulations run at NAS
Spoiler Alert: Computer Simulations Provide Preview of Solar Eclipse
A team from Predictive Science, Inc., with support from NASA, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and the National Science Foundation, created large-scale simulations of the Sun's surface in order to predict what the solar corona will look like during the total solar eclipse on August 21, 2017. The series of highly-detailed solar simulations were run on several supercomputers, including Pleiades at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division.
Read more about the simulations predicting the corona during this solar eclipse
Zooming in on Climate Predictions
Engineers at Northeastern University, in collaboration with researchers in the NASA Earth Exchange project at NASA Ames, used the Pleiades supercomputer to analyze a "colossal amount" of historic climate data, as part of their work to develop a system that zooms in on climate data to produce higher-resolution projections.
Read more about the system being developed to produce higher-resolution climate projections
New 3-D Simulations Show How Galactic Centers Cool Their Jets
Supported by supercomputing resources at NAS, scientists at Berkeley Lab and Purdue University scientists show how instabilities develop in extreme energy releases from black holes.
New Podcast Features NAS Supercomputing Expert Bill Thigpen
Bill Thigpen, who manages the supercomputing resources here at the NAS facility, talks about how he got into the field and why we need supercomputers for NASA missions "across the board."
Hyperion Research Announces HPC Innovation Excellence Award Winners
NASA's Modular Supercomputing Facility garnered the HPC Data Center Innovation Award from Hyperion Research, which announced the newest recipients of their HPC Innovation Excellence Awards for outstanding achievements.
Read more about the award for NASA's Modular Supercomputing Facility
Astrophysicist Studies Earth-Size Planets Using Supercomputers
A University of Oklahoma (OU) astrophysics researcher has identified the possible compositions of the seven planets in the TRAPPIST-1 system. He used thousands of numerical simulations on the NASA Pleiades and OU supercomputers to identify the planets stable for millions of years.
Space Hots Up When Galaxy Clusters Collide
A collision of two clusters containing millions of galaxies has produced a turbulent region of hot gas, with temperatures reaching 1.7 million degrees Celsius, according to astronomers at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The researchers discovered this surprising phenomenon by running simulations on the Pleiades supercomputer, using observations from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory.
Read more about these simulations run using data from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory
Scientists Find Giant Wave Rolling Through the Perseus Galaxy Cluster
Combining data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory with radio observations and computer simulations run on the Pleiades supercomputer, an international team of scientists has discovered a vast wave of hot gas in the nearby Perseus galaxy cluster. Spanning some 200,000 light-years, the wave is about twice the size of our own Milky Way galaxy.
NASA Issues a Challenge to Speed Up Its Supercomputer Code
NASA’s aeronautical innovators are sponsoring a competition to reward qualified contenders who can manipulate the agency’s FUN3D design software so it runs ten to 10,000 times faster on the Pleiades supercomputer without any decrease in accuracy.
Quantum Computer Learns to 'See' Trees
A new study co-authored by NAS Division earth scientist Ramakrishna Nemani describes how researchers trained a D-Wave 2X quantum computer to recognize trees, laying the groundwork for better climate forecasting.
Read more about how the quantum computer was trained to recognize trees
When Rocket Science Meets X-ray Science
A four-part series by Lawrence Berkeley Lab's Glenn Roberts Jr. focuses on a partnership between NASA and the Lab to explore spacecraft thermal protection materials in microscale detail. Analysis and simulations were produced using the Pleiades supercomputer at NAS.
Our Supermassive Black Hole Could Be 'Supercharging' Stars' Magnetism
Using the NAS facility's high-end computing resources, astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics have—for the first time—been able to include the magnetic fields of stars in computer simulations where a star is "pulled apart and stretched," giving a clue about how the stars in the center of our galaxy respond to straying too close to a monster black hole.
Managing Energy Efficiency at NASA
Scientific Computing World's Robert Roe discusses how NAS is optimizing energy efficiency and water usage to maximize the facility’s potential to deliver computing services to our user community.
Targeting Cookstove Pollution Using Supercomputers and NASA Satellites
Using NASA High-End Computing Capability resources, researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder and Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, were able to map out pollution flow patterns world-wide and determine how cookstove emissions in one country can cause problems hundreds of miles away.
Read more about how researchers are mapping pollution flow patterns
Exploring Drone Aerodynamics with Computers
For decades, NASA has used computer models to simulate the flow of air around aircraft in order to test designs and improve the performance of next-generation vehicles. At NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley, researchers recently used this technique to explore the aerodynamics of a popular example of a small, battery-powered drone, a modified DJI Phantom 3 quadcopter.
