Monday, January 6
2:00 PM-3:00 PM
Ile de France 2&3
Chair: Richard Anderson, University of Washington
IP2
From Sir Issac to the Sloan Survey - Calculating the Structure and Chaos of Gravity in the Universe
The orbit of any one planet depends on the combined motion of all the planets, not to mention the actions of all these on each other. To consider simultaneously all these causes of motion and to define these motions by exact laws allowing of convenient calculation exceeds, unless I am mistaken, the forces of the entire human intellect. _Isaac Newton 1687
To date, the longest accurate integration of the solar sytems has calculated 6 million years, little more than 0.1% of its lifetime.
The speaker will describe programs to integrate the solar system for its lifetime and to understand the stability and formation of other planetary systems. He will discuss the larger N-body problem of the formation and large-scale structure of the 100 billion galaxies, each composed of 100 billion stars, and will describe three keys to meeting the challenge of cosmological N-body simulation: adaptive potential solvers, adaptive integrators, and volume renormalization. With these techniques and a dedicated teraflop facility, simulation may ultimately stay even with observation of the universe.
George Lake
University of Washington, NASA HPCC/Earth and Space Science Project
MMD, 10/22/96