http://hipacc.ucsc.edu/AstroShorts.html AstroShorts highlight current research in computational astronomy being done by astrophysicists and computational scientists at the nine University of California campuses and three affiliated U.S. Department of Energy laboratories (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Los Alamos National Laboratory) — consortium members of the University of California High-Performance AstroComputing Center, UC-HiPACC. Tue, 28 Oct 2014 16:19:14 +0100 http://hipacc.ucsc.edu/index.php#40 http://hipacc.ucsc.edu/Homepage_Posts.php#40 It was a classic case of serendipity. While investigating how supermassive black holes formed in the early universe, UC Santa Cruz postdoc Ke-Jung Chen stumbled on the discovery that some truly monstrous primordial supermassive stars could explode without leaving any black hole or other stellar remnant behind. 27 Oct 2014 16:11:16 PST http://hipacc.ucsc.edu/index.php#36 http://hipacc.ucsc.edu/Homepage_Posts.php#36 Two 11-second movies show face-on and head-on views of a computational simulation of a collision of two converging streams of interstellar gas, leading to collapse and formation of a star cluster at the center. Any stars born of the same giant molecular cloud always show the same “DNA fingerprint” of chemical abundances of trace elements. But most groups of stars drift apart, eventually even ending up on opposite sides of a galaxy—as likely happened with our Sun. Thus, astronomers have long wondered whether it might be possible to tell if two stars now on opposite sides of the galaxy were born billions of years ago from the same cloud. New simulations explain why, and offer hope: might it be possible to find our own Sun’s long-lost siblings? Read the AstroShort Separated at Birth: Finding our Sun’s Long-Lost Siblings?   19 Sep 2014 10:41:47 PST http://hipacc.ucsc.edu/index.php#35 http://hipacc.ucsc.edu/Homepage_Posts.php#35 Rockin’ and rollin’ ribosome This UC-HiPACC website is a central news source about all computational science at all 10 UC campuses and three affiliated DOE national laboratories (Lawrence Berkeley, Lawrence Livermore, and Los Alamos). Check out our three press rooms. For the latest in astrophysics, see Computational Astronomy Press Room. For news re K-20 students and the public, see Education/Public Outreach Press Room. Just posted: the latest about all other fields of Data Science. (psst! want $50,000? design a climate big-data app!). Updates highlighted on Facebook and Twitter.   16 Sep 2014 11:22:41 PST http://hipacc.ucsc.edu/index.php#34 http://hipacc.ucsc.edu/Homepage_Posts.php#34 August 31, 2014 — Early, fast, turbulent mixing of gas within giant molecular clouds—the birthplaces of stars—means all stars formed from a single cloud bear the same unique chemical “tag” or “DNA fingerprint,” writes computational astronomers at University of California, Santa Cruz in the journal Nature, published online on August 31, 2014. Could such chemical tags help astronomers identify our own Sun’s long-lost sibling stars? Read the UC-HiPACC press release at http://hipacc.ucsc.edu/PressRelease/sibling-stars.html and watch the movies! Two 11-second movies shows a computational simulation of a collision of two converging streams of interstellar gas, leading to collapse and formation of a star cluster at the center. 31 Aug 2014 10:17:43 PST http://hipacc.ucsc.edu/index.php#33 http://hipacc.ucsc.edu/Homepage_Posts.php#33 Whodunit? A brilliant flash of ultraviolet light from supernova SN 2013cu in a galaxy 360 million light-years away in the constellation Boötes solved an enduring mystery about the origins of massive exploding stars called Type IIb core-collapse supernovae. Thanks to the intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF) pipeline, the perp of Type IIb supernovae has been identified as Wolf-Rayet. “This is the smoking gun!” exulted Peter Nugent, head of the Computational Cosmology Center at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Read the AstroShort ’Smoking Gun’ for Stellar Explosion Mystery. While observing a galaxy known as UGC 9379 (left; image from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey) about 360 million light-years from Earth, the iPTF team used a 1.2-meter robotic telescope at Palomar Observatory to discover a new supernova, SN 2013cu (right, marked with an arrow; image from a 1.5-meter robotic telescope, also at Palomar). 25 Aug 2014 14:33:29 PST http://hipacc.ucsc.edu/index.php#31 http://hipacc.ucsc.edu/Homepage_Posts.php#31 Loud and twisted: some supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies have twisted magnetic fields so powerful they counteract the colossal pull of their gravity—allowing clouds of accreting gas or other objects literally to levitate temporarily in place above the black hole instead of plunging into the maw. That’s the conclusion of one UC Berkeley researcher and three coauthors after comparing their computational model to empirical measurements of not just one or two, but of 76 supermassive black holes in loud radio galaxies and blazars. The new findings may mean that theorists must re-evaluate their understanding of how supermassive black holes behave. Read the AstroShort “Magnetically Levitating Black Holes.” A computer simulation shows gas (yellow) falling in the direction of a central black hole (too small to be seen). Twin jets (blue), strongly focused by spiral magnetic field lines, shoot out towards the top and bottom, perpendicular to the plane of the rotating accretion disk. Credit: Alexander Tchekhovskoy/LBNL 04 Aug 2014 11:12:40 PST