Powerful supercomputer maps world’s largest magnetic turbulence in the galaxy
Turbulence is ubiquitous — from coffee cups to ocean waves and bumpy flights.
And this powerful state isn’t limited to Earth; its influence extends throughout the galaxy and universe.
Despite being a widespread phenomenon, turbulence remains a major unsolved puzzle in physics. For many years, experts have tried to understand how turbulent energy moves across various scales.
Now, an international research team led by Princeton University and the University of Toronto has observed this process with exceptional clarity.
They have come together to develop what’s said to be the “world’s largest-ever simulations of magnetized turbulence.”
In this new work, the scale of the simulations demanded a computational effort comparable to running 140,000 computers at the same time.
“To put these massive simulations into perspective: if we had started one on a single laptop when humans first domesticated animals, it would just be finishing now,” said James Beattie, a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University’s Department of Astrophysical Sciences.
“Luckily, utilizing the amazing resources from the Leibniz Supercomputing Centre, we can distribute the workload across thousands of computers to accelerate the calculations,” Beattie added.
Galactic-type turbulence
The simulations centered on galactic-type turbulence, exploring the disordered movements within the interstellar medium – essentially, the stuff that fills the vast spaces between stars in our home galaxy.
Through highly detailed simulations of galactic turbulence, researchers discovered significant differences from long-standing astrophysical models.
They uncovered that magnetic fields exert a powerful influence on how energy cascades through this cosmic space.
Specifically, the simulations showed that magnetic fields in the interstellar medium reduce small-scale turbulent movements while amplifying specific wave-like phenomena called Alfvén waves.
These findings could provide insights into the galaxy’s turbulent structure, the movement of energetic particles, and even how stars are born in turbulent environments.
As per NASA, turbulence on a large scale is crucial for star formation within the vast molecular clouds of the Milky Way.
Beattie added: “The dream is to discover universal features in turbulence across the Universe, and we’ll continue pushing the limits of the next-generation of simulations to test that idea.”
Use of supercomputers
A complete mathematical way to predict how energy moves from large to small scales (in oceans, the atmosphere, or space) doesn’t yet exist.
Due to magnetic fields, modeling energy transfer in space is more challenging and requires substantial computing resources.
That’s why the team leveraged the computing power of the SuperMUC-NG supercomputer at the Leibniz Centre in Germany. It allowed the researchers to compress millennia of calculations into a manageable timeframe.
Reportedly, the model generated a massive virtual cube, with each side spanning 10,080 units. This represents the largest simulation of magnetized turbulence ever created, enabling researchers to study phenomena across a significantly wider range of scales than previously possible.
The implications of this research extend far beyond theoretical astrophysics. For safe space travel, a better grasp of turbulence and high-energy particle creation is practically significant.
In recent years, commercial space flight has gained momentum.
Therefore, space weather prediction has become important for the safety of both equipment and human lives venturing beyond Earth’s protective embrace.
‘‘The research has implications for predicting and monitoring space weather to better understand the plasma environment around satellites and future space missions, and also the acceleration of highly energetic particles, which damage everything, and could endanger human beings in space,” said Amitava Bhattacharjee, a co-author on the new paper.
Source: Interesting Engineering
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Powerful supercomputer maps world’s largest magnetic turbulence in the galaxy