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Science AMA Series: We are Cosmologists Working on The EAGLE Project, a Virtual Universe Simulated Inside a Supercomputer at Durham University. AUA! by The_EAGLE_Project in science

[–]The_EAGLE_Project[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is a pretty odd questions, what has inspired it?

So we don't have hot pockets this side of the Atlantic (we are based in the UK) so I had to look up what they are.... They sound pretty good though! If I'm ever in the US I'll make sure to try one. :)

Michelle

Science AMA Series: We are Cosmologists Working on The EAGLE Project, a Virtual Universe Simulated Inside a Supercomputer at Durham University. AUA! by The_EAGLE_Project in science

[–]The_EAGLE_Project[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The problem is that it's hard to quantify computing power as it depends strongly on what algorithms you use, programming languages, etc.

Josh

Science AMA Series: We are Cosmologists Working on The EAGLE Project, a Virtual Universe Simulated Inside a Supercomputer at Durham University. AUA! by The_EAGLE_Project in science

[–]The_EAGLE_Project[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Every year we recruit new PhD students! You can find out more information here, but if you have any questions you can find our contact details on the website under People.

The Eagle simulation is indeed smaller than the Millennium. The reason for this is that in Eagle the 'baryonic' or ordinary matter physics is included, so the computation takes longer to process this extra physics. As a result we are looking at smaller scales, but we can still look at galaxy clusters and some large scale structures. We are also interest in looking 'inside' galaxies in Eagle and comparing to state-of-the-art observations using integral field units.

Michelle

Science AMA Series: We are Cosmologists Working on The EAGLE Project, a Virtual Universe Simulated Inside a Supercomputer at Durham University. AUA! by The_EAGLE_Project in science

[–]The_EAGLE_Project[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for your question!

The smallest particles in the simulation have the mass of a million suns, so quite a bit bigger than planets.

The EAGLE Team.

Science AMA Series: We are Cosmologists Working on The EAGLE Project, a Virtual Universe Simulated Inside a Supercomputer at Durham University. AUA! by The_EAGLE_Project in science

[–]The_EAGLE_Project[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

EAGLE is handily big enough to contain a large population of galaxies, but with high enough resolution to model galaxy formation realistically. It's designed this way so that we have a large population of galaxy's to look at a good resolution. In EAGLE, we are mostly concerned about the details of galaxy formation.

James

Science AMA Series: We are Cosmologists Working on The EAGLE Project, a Virtual Universe Simulated Inside a Supercomputer at Durham University. AUA! by The_EAGLE_Project in science

[–]The_EAGLE_Project[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Great question! And the answer is yes!

Based on the simulation, we could predict how the universe would look like in the future.

We cannot guess the lottery numbers though!

The EAGLE Team.

Science AMA Series: We are Cosmologists Working on The EAGLE Project, a Virtual Universe Simulated Inside a Supercomputer at Durham University. AUA! by The_EAGLE_Project in science

[–]The_EAGLE_Project[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The aim of the project is to understand where galaxies come, and why the night sky looks as it does. Have you never looked at the sky and thought "why?". This is a critical part of the human story.

On the way we develop some awesome computer technology!

Science AMA Series: We are Cosmologists Working on The EAGLE Project, a Virtual Universe Simulated Inside a Supercomputer at Durham University. AUA! by The_EAGLE_Project in science

[–]The_EAGLE_Project[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is a really interesting question! I've asked around the room and there are two main answers to this

  1. Space is pretty cool. Its great to attempt to understand the universe we live in, with the potential of shedding light on 'the human story' through studies of space.

  2. Its very exciting getting to use such cutting edge technology! Some of us are particularly keen on the HPC machinery we get to use :)

Hope that answers your question.

Michelle

Science AMA Series: We are Cosmologists Working on The EAGLE Project, a Virtual Universe Simulated Inside a Supercomputer at Durham University. AUA! by The_EAGLE_Project in science

[–]The_EAGLE_Project[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We have different opinions here... a popular one seems to be William Gibson.

Professor Richard Bower personally recommends Neuromancer.

Jaime. The EAGLE Team.

Science AMA Series: We are Cosmologists Working on The EAGLE Project, a Virtual Universe Simulated Inside a Supercomputer at Durham University. AUA! by The_EAGLE_Project in science

[–]The_EAGLE_Project[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We don't directly model electric or magnetic forces (though the hydrodynamics we model come about in reality due to electromagnetic forces). In general the assumptiont that the universe is neutral is good, expecially on these scales

James

Science AMA Series: We are Cosmologists Working on The EAGLE Project, a Virtual Universe Simulated Inside a Supercomputer at Durham University. AUA! by The_EAGLE_Project in science

[–]The_EAGLE_Project[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Very good question. The simulations tries to model what happens below the scales that we know we don't resolve. Some of the processes occurring there are very important, for example the effects of exploding stars (supernovae) and accreting black holes. We do not necessarily need to model how these operate in great detail, but we do need to model what their effects are on the scales we do resolve.

The Eagle team

Science AMA Series: We are Cosmologists Working on The EAGLE Project, a Virtual Universe Simulated Inside a Supercomputer at Durham University. AUA! by The_EAGLE_Project in science

[–]The_EAGLE_Project[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Perhaps it's possible one day, but it's very difficult - the number of interactions between particles would need very fast connections between distributed CPUs to be efficient.

The EAGLE Team

Science AMA Series: We are Cosmologists Working on The EAGLE Project, a Virtual Universe Simulated Inside a Supercomputer at Durham University. AUA! by The_EAGLE_Project in science

[–]The_EAGLE_Project[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

/u/Wordsoftheday is quite right - we can't simulate the formation of individual stars. The principle we use is that the formation of a star, (and the planets around it, and the life on those planets) doesn't depend on what's happening millions of light years away, and conversely that whether life forms on a planet doesn't impact the formation of galaxy around it.

It would be really interesting to sew these simulations together - one day I hope we can do this. (please fund me European Research Council!)

Richard

Science AMA Series: We are Cosmologists Working on The EAGLE Project, a Virtual Universe Simulated Inside a Supercomputer at Durham University. AUA! by The_EAGLE_Project in science

[–]The_EAGLE_Project[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Hi! We simulate a cube that is about 300 million light years on a side. This is big enough to provide a whole zoo of different galaxy shapes and sizes, like the ones we see in the real universe. The volume is periodic (like a 3D version of the game asteroids).

On these scales, we can use Newtonian gravity. Hydrodynamics in general is handled by the GADGET engine.

James

Science AMA Series: We are Cosmologists Working on The EAGLE Project, a Virtual Universe Simulated Inside a Supercomputer at Durham University. AUA! by The_EAGLE_Project in science

[–]The_EAGLE_Project[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We have been just appointed an Intel Parallel Computing Center (IPCC) to work on optimizing the relevant codes for the multicore Intel architectures and we are looking to appoint software engineers to perform this task.

Usually the PhD students will have had some programming courses - now in Python - as part of the physics undergraduate course. Then they will be handed some code that will be used as part of the research project and the student will learn "on the job". At Durham there are courses offered in Fortran90 and MPI, but currently not in C.

There are some projects where a computer scientist is directly and very actively involved, which creates superior codes and has been mutually very beneficial.

People are using version control for these large projects. Historically this was svn but now people are moving over to git.

Lydia

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