Showing posts with label universe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label universe. Show all posts

Friday, October 23, 2009

Origin of Unseen Universe

World'd fastest super computer model called Road Runner model is by far the latest model that projects the origin of unseen universe. Let us have a close look at it in this post. The model is one of the largest simulations of the distribution of matter in the universe, and aims to look at galaxy-scale mass concentrations above and beyond quantities seen in state-of-the-art sky surveys.

The Roadrunner Universe model relies on a hierarchical grid/particle algorithm that best matches the physical aspects of the simulation to the hybrid architecture of Roadrunner. Habib and his team wrote an entirely new computer code that aggressively exploits Roadrunner's hybrid architecture and makes full use of the PowerXCell 8i computational accelerators. They also created a dedicated analysis and visualization software framework to handle the huge simulation database.

Because the universe is expanding and at the same time accelerating, either there is a huge gap in our understanding of physics, or there is a strange new form of matter that dominates the universe -- 'dark energy' -- making up about 70 percent of it," said Habib. "In addition, there is five times more of an unknown 'dark matter' than there is ordinary matter in the universe, and we know it's there from many different observations, most spectacularly, we've seen it bend light in pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope, but its origin is also not understood."

Even though it's looking at only a small segment of the "accessible" universe, Habib's "Roadrunner Universe" model requires a petascale computer because, like the universe, it's mind-bendingly large. The model's basic unit is a particle with a mass of approximately one billion suns and it includes 64 billion and more of those particles.

Thursday, April 16, 2009

History of Earth?

Lets look into how was this earth formed?

In science we must expand our conception of reality all the time. One of the very difficult concepts is the understanding of time. Everyone is conscious of the changes in the physical and biological world; they give us an awareness of time. The daily rhythm, the seasons, physical changes throughout a human lifetime are familiar concepts of time to us. Time is measured by change, but where change occurs over millions of years our own perception of time is on unfamiliar territory. To understand the rhythm of change of our planet and the effects it has on life on Earth we have to expand our perception of time.

The geological processes that shape the surface of our planet, move the tectonic plates, build mountains and erode them again work over millions of years. These forces provide the ever changing conditions for life, which adapted to those changes. But those changes did not go undetected. Our understanding of Earth has expanded tremendously in the past 100 years, and new technologies have provided further insight into Earth's dynamic and history.

Earth itself acts like a clock, rotating on its axis once every 24 hours. To read Earth's time it is necessary to look at the changes that have been recorded. To identify changes that occurred due to the geological processes of our planet we can look at rocks. They are key to both the past and the nature of processes. Life has managed to leave records of time and the changes it went through time as well.

Fossils are the remains of ancient organisms. Some looked very similar to life forms that are still living today. Fossils can be bones, teeth, shells, impressions of plants and even imprints of animal tracks. Fossils within a rock are a type of organic clock that tick by systematic radioactive decay of certain chemical elements, which permit us to measure with remarkable accuracy the number of years that have passed since the minerals in a rock crystallized.

Fossils are recorded in rocks much like your footprints are recorded on a beach. As you walk along the beach, if the sand is fine enough and soft enough, you will make footprints. If the wind and waves do not destroy your footprints, they may record your existence well after your passing.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Jupiter Red Spot?

Jupiter, the largest planet of the solar system takes its position after mars and fifth planet close to the sun.Scientists recently noticed a GREAT RED SPOT on JUPITER which is a persistent anticyclonic storm on the planet that lasted atleast 300 years.The Red Spot is huge as the storm is large enough to be visible through earth based telescopes. The red spot is large enough to contain TWO or THREE PLANETS of EARTH’s SIZE.

Jupiter also has white ovals and brown ovals, which are lesser unnamed storms. White ovals tend to consist of relatively cool clouds within the upper atmosphere. Brown ovals are warmer and located within the “normal cloud layer“. Such storms can last hours or centuries.. Thus storm created big spot on the largest planet of our solar system.