DATE: Thursday, May 1, 2008
TIME: 12:00 noon - 1:00 pm
PLACE: CIC 2101 NOTE SPECIAL LOCATION
SPEAKER:
Rupert Croft, CMU
TITLE:
Petascale Cosmology
ABSTRACT:
Modern cosmology, the study of the Universe and its contents relies on what is by definition the largest dataset one can analyze to draw its conclusions. Theoretical predictions and modelling require enormous computer simulations to capture the structure and complexity we see around us. Telescopic and satellite surveys provide the data to compare against. CMU, with the recent inauguration of the McWilliams Center for Cosmology aims to become a world leader as cosmology reaches the petascale regime. I will outline some projects in which CMU is becoming heavily involved and which will need a new approach, combining efforts from many departments within the University. These include our role in the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, an upcoming facility which will survey the sky with a 3 gigapixel camera, producing a 50 Petabyte dataset which must be made publically accessible. I will also discuss the simulation work being led at CMU which aims to follow the evolution of the dark matter structure of the Universe with 10 trillion particles, a thousandfold increase over current work.
BIO:
Rupert Croft received his D. Phil. from Oxford University in 1995, having studied the link between cosmology and clusters of galaxies. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Ohio State University and Harvard University before joining the Carnegie Mellon faculty in September 2001.
SDI / LCS Seminar Questions?
Karen Lindenfelser, 86716, or visit www.pdl.cmu.edu/SDI/