GCIS TECHNOLOGY BRIEFING: Supercomputer probes answer to "life, the universe and everything"

 

ISSUED BY: GCIS Communications Command Center

SOURCE: Sunday Mercury

03February2011 2:03pmEST

GCIS TECHNOLOGY UPDATE: A new supercomputer is being launched today which scientists hope will answer questions about the origins of the universe.

Reminiscent of Deep Thought, the fictional computer which was designed to find the answer to "life, the universe and everything" in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books by Douglas Adams, the SCIAMA is aimed at finding out how our universe began.

The new supercomputer, which has the power of 1,000 desktop computers, 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. (read full report)

 

 

 

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