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Researchers at ORNL used TRITON to simulate flooding in Houston, Texas, and surrounding areas caused by Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Light purples represent shallower water, and dark purples represent deeper water. Credit: Sudershan Gangrade/ORNL A team of researchers from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Tennessee Technological University has created a 2D open-source flood inundation model designed for multi-architecture computing systems. The Two-dimensional Runoff Inundation Toolkit for Operational Needs, or TRITON, can use multiple graphics processing units, or GPUs, to model floods more quickly and accurately than existing tools. Flood modeling is an important part of emergency preparedness and response. However, models must be fast and accurate—returning simulation results in minutes—to be a useful tool for decision making and planning. The higher the resolution of the model, the more computing pow...

Not all stars enjoy just wandering around, orbiting the galactic center with all the other stars. Some stars go rogue, crossing the Milky Way with significant force. It is a runaway star, and we can trace its trajectory to understand the violent events that could occur in the Universe. One such star, and one of the more famous ones, is Zeta Ophiuchi. Located about 440 light-years from Earth in the equatorial constellation Ophiuchus, it is also one of the strangest stars in the sky. Not only is it incredibly fast, at about 30 to 40 kilometers (roughly 20 to 25 miles) per second, but it’s a strange type of star to see roaring in space. Zeta Ophiuchi is the main sequence star; that is, one that still combines hydrogen into helium in its core. And it’s a hot, massive O-type star: about 20 times the mass of the Sun, glowing blue with intense heat. Such stars also have relatively short lives; Zeta Ophiuchi is about half way past the main sequence’s projected age of 8 m...

Numerical simulation of a black hole-neutron star merger. Density profiles are shown in blue and green, magnetic field lines penetrating black holes are shown in pink. Unbound material is shown in white its velocity with a green arrow. Credit: K. Hayashi (Kyoto University) Using supercomputer calculations, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Gravity Physics in Potsdam and from Japan showed a consistent picture for the first time: They modeled the complete process of a black hole colliding with a neutron star. In their study, they calculated the process from the final orbit through merging to the post-merger phase where, according to their calculations, high-energy gamma-ray bursts could occur. The results of their study have now been published in the journal D Physical Overview . Nearly seven years have passed since the first detection of gravitational waves. On September 14, 2015, LIGO detectors in the US recorded the signa...

While working out of a hotel room in Italy, astronaut Thomas Reiter orders a four-wheeled robot to retrieve rock from the surface of an active volcano on Sicily’s east coast, and he does so while role-playing as if he were in orbit. around the Moon. The four-day simulation is part of the European Space Agency’s (ESA) preparations for a future mission to the Moon, where it plans to land a rover on the lunar surface to collect rock samples. The rover, as part of the upcoming Artemis mission, will be guided by a team on Earth, as well as astronauts on Lunar Gateway, the planned space station that will orbit the Moon. Crawler Scouts walk around Mount Etna. (Gif: ESA) Although not the Moon, Mount Etna’s volcanic surface serves as an analogue to the Moon’s surface. The four-wheeled and two-armed Interact rover has been modified for rugged volcanic slopes, and explores rough terrain with two other rovers, Light Cruiser Units 1 and 2, belonging to the Germ...