Further Findings

Ranger

In a world in which small computing devices such as the iPad and its cousins get a lot of attention and what they’re used for is getting smaller (I’ve used more than 140 characters already), it’s good to know there is still room for Big Iron.

Of course, big problems—such as astronomy, energy, biosciences, geosciences and climate—need a big computer with a lot of processing power.

That’s what we’re talking about with the Ranger supercomputer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center.

Some Ranger
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Visualization of a large jet fuel pool fire in a cross flow that is heating a suspended cylindrical container.

A story on the Web site of the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) is about research to model explosions. It highlights the work of Charles Wright, a chemistry professor at the University of Utah, who is using TACC’s Ranger computer.

Experiments on explosions can be tricky, but they’re no piece of cake to model on a computer. The story explains: Explosions are particularly challenging
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Mark Nimlos, National Renewable Energy Laboratory

To get to some oil reserves, you have to drill deeply.

Scientists working on biofuels also drill deeply, but they drill into the molecular-level activity of enzymes instead of rock.

How energy researchers are doing this using the Ranger supercomputer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) is the subject of a story by Aaron Dubrow, TACC’s science writer.

Dubrow shares some of his thoughts about the research:

“I thought some of the most interesting parts of the story were that
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