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Celeritas code sets fast pace for particle physics discoveries

by Dawn Levy High energy physicists run on a treadmill that keeps speeding up. Their collider experiments smash particles at dazzling speeds and energies. Detectors identify and track the multitudes of smaller particles that fly out. With powerful new colliders crashing particles at ever-increasing energies, even more daughter particles are…
Katie BetheaKatie BetheaNovember 19, 20252 min
A collage of images taken from computer simulations of the universe featuring the arrangement of stars and the density of gasses in bright colors.

Largest-Ever Universe Simulation Up for Supercomputing’s Highest Prize

Last fall, as the finalists for the Association for Computing Machinery’s 2024 Gordon Bell Prize were waiting to hear their names called, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Argonne and Oak Ridge National Laboratories had just finished running the largest astrophysical simulation of the universe ever conducted — and now, it…
Jeremy RumseyJeremy RumseyNovember 14, 20255 min

OLCF’s Bronson Messer Named APS Fellow

Bronson Messer is the Director of Science at the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility. Credit: Carlos Jones/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy Bronson Messer, a distinguished staff scientist at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has been named a Fellow of the…
Angela GosnellAngela GosnellNovember 14, 20252 min

Frontier Simulations Pierce Mysteries of Galactic Nuclei

To probe the mysteries of how galaxies evolve over time, scientists needed a supercomputer with out-of-this-world computational power. The results of a study conducted on the Frontier supercomputer at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory offer the clearest portrait so far of how some galaxies regulate the energy produced by supermassive black…
Matt LakinMatt LakinSeptember 30, 20256 min

Forging Fusion

The nuclear reactions that fuel the sun could soon be harnessed to generate electricity on Earth — with help from supercomputers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Type One Energy Group, a Knoxville-based startup, expects to build the world’s most advanced stellarator fusion device by 2030, with a pilot…
Matt LakinMatt LakinSeptember 24, 20258 min
neutron star simulation ORNL

Journey to the Center of a Neutron Star

For astrophysicists, neutron stars stand out as objects of irresistible fascination — perhaps, in part, because of how difficult they are to decipher. But calculations conducted on the Frontier supercomputer, located at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, have revealed new clues about the inner workings of neutron…
Coury TurczynCoury TurczynJune 2, 20259 min
Illustration of the GRETA detector, a spherical array of metal cylinders. The detector is divided into two halves to show the inside of the machine. Both halves are attached to metal harnesses, displayed against a black and green cyber-themed background.

Novel Data Streaming Software Chases Light Speed from Accelerator to Supercomputer

Analyzing massive datasets from nuclear physics experiments can take hours or days to process, but researchers are working to radically reduce that time to mere seconds using special software being developed at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley and Oak Ridge national laboratories. DELERIA — short for Distributed Event-Level Experiment…
Jeremy RumseyJeremy RumseyMay 19, 20258 min

DEEP DIVE: Exascale Computing Illuminates Detailed Structure of Atomic Nuclei

by Chris Driver Using a novel computational modeling technique to test theoretical quantum physics, a team of researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have discovered properties of the atomic nucleus at new levels of detail — illuminating behavior of its protons and neutrons amid fundamental forces…
Katie BetheaKatie BetheaFebruary 26, 20257 min

Summit’s Bonus Year of Scientific Achievement

Leadership-class supercomputers dedicated to open science are not built to last forever. In fact, they have a limited lifespan by design. No matter how powerful they may be on launch day, advancements in computing technology and changing computing needs will push them closer to obsolescence with each passing year until…
Coury TurczynCoury TurczynDecember 3, 202415 min
side by side images of galaxy clusters.

Record-Breaking Run on Frontier Sets New Bar for Simulating the Universe in the Exascale Era

The universe just got a whole lot bigger — or at least in the world of computer simulations, that is. In early November, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory used the fastest supercomputer on the planet to run the largest astrophysical simulation of the universe ever conducted.…
Jeremy RumseyJeremy RumseyNovember 19, 20246 min
neck rupture in nuclear fission

Surprising Details in a More Precise Description of Fission

Nuclear fission — when the nucleus of an atom splits in two, releasing energy — may seem like a process that is fully understood. First discovered in 1939 and thoroughly studied ever since, fission is a constant factor in modern life, used in everything from nuclear medicine to power-generating nuclear…
Coury TurczynCoury TurczynOctober 23, 20248 min
The Frontier supercomputer simulated magnetic responses inside calcium-48, depicted by red and blue spheres. Insights into the nucleus’s fundamental forces could shed light on supernova dynamics.

Frontier Simulations Provide New Insights Into Calcium-48’s Controversial Nuclear Magnetic Excitation

The nucleus of an atom is almost inconceivably small, and most people have little idea just how much of the world around them is shaped by the strong nuclear forces that hold those tiny subatomic particles together. Nuclear physicists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory recently used…
Jeremy RumseyJeremy RumseySeptember 3, 20248 min

Frontier Simulations Could Help Build a Better Diamond

The world’s fastest supercomputer helped researchers simulate synthesizing a material harder and tougher than diamond — or any other substance on Earth. The study used Frontier, the HPE Cray EX supercomputing system at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, to predict the likeliest strategy to synthesize such a…
Matt LakinMatt LakinJuly 26, 20247 min
neutrinos

Untangling the Entangled

Researchers used quantum simulations to obtain new insights into the nature of neutrinos — the mysterious subatomic particles that abound throughout the universe — and their role in the deaths of massive stars. The study relied on support from the Quantum Computing User Program, or QCUP, and the Quantum Science Center, a national Quantum Information…
Matt LakinMatt LakinJune 21, 20247 min
X-ray bursts

Scientists Use Summit Supercomputer to Explore Exotic Stellar Phenomena

Understanding how a thermonuclear flame spreads across the surface of a neutron star — and what that spreading can tell us about the relationship between the neutron star’s mass and its radius — can also reveal a lot about the star’s composition. Neutron stars — the compact remnants of supernova…
Quinn BurkhartQuinn BurkhartMarch 15, 20246 min