A simulated galaxy cluster.
Credit: Chris Power, ICRAR/UWA.
Astronomers have been awarded 45 million units of supercomputing time to study the influence of supermassive black holes on their host galaxies.
The team from WA, Tasmania and the UK were awarded the time on Australia’s largest research supercomputing facility, the National Computational Infrastructure (NCI Australia) in Canberra.
They will use it to combine computer models of black holes—and the jets that shoot out of them—with large-scale cosmological simulations of the Universe.
Associate Professor Chris Power, from the University of Western Australia node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR), is leading the research.
He said black holes can have a profound effect on how galaxies evolve.
“Black holes produce very powerful jets and winds,” he said.
“We know they can stop stars forming, and create the different kinds of galaxies we see in the Universe today.
“But the problem is that we have a very cartoonish understanding of how this process works.”
The researchers will use the supercomputer time to study how powerful jets from black holes impact their larger galactic and cosmic environments.
They will combine sophisticated cosmological simulations of galaxy formation, developed at ICRAR, with detailed models of black hole jets, developed by Dr Stanislav Shabala and PhD student Patrick Yates at the University of Tasmania.
The team also includes researchers from the University of Hertfordshire.
Associate Professor Power said running the simulations on a laptop computer would take almost 5,000 years.
“On the supercomputer, we’ll probably get results in a couple of days,” he said.
“So we want to be able to run hundreds of these kinds of simulations. We’re basically treating them as experiments.”
The astronomers will tweak their models with each simulation, improving our understanding of how black holes change their host galaxies.
“It’s a bit like when we go into a lab and we’re pouring combinations of chemicals into test tubes—we can see what kinds of things happen,” Associate Professor Power said.
The study will be one of the first to run on NCI’s brand new supercomputer Gadi, and will be undertaken over the next six to nine months.
It was one of four awarded time through the Australasian Leadership Computing Grants program, which attracts bids from researchers all over the country.
The other projects will conduct research in global climate modelling, decadal climate forecasts and combustion for low emissions gas turbines. More at NCI Australia.
Multimedia
Flying through a simulated galaxy cluster revealing the gas that is attracted to the dark matter ‘knots’ of the cosmic web. Each bright spot is a galaxy in the larger cluster, and we travel in towards larger galaxies undergoing a merger in the centre of the view.
Credit: Chris Power, ICRAR/UWA.
A simulated pair of jets from a supermassive black hole. The model that created this simulation will be combined with broader models of galaxies, allowing astronomers to investigate the influence black hole jets have on galaxy formation using the awarded compute time. Credit: Patrick Yates, University of Tasmania
A simulated pair of jets from a supermassive black hole. The model that created this simulation will be combined with broader models of galaxies, allowing astronomers to investigate the influence black hole jets have on galaxy formation using the awarded compute time.
Credit: Patrick Yates, University of Tasmania
The view of a galaxy cluster with the usually invisible dark matter revealed. This view shows where the dark matter is located within the simulated cluster, each bright spot is a ‘knot’ of dark matter corresponding to the location of a galaxy.
Credit: Chris Power, ICRAR/UWA.
The same simulated galaxy cluster revealing the gas that is attracted to the dark matter ‘knots’. Again each bright spot is a galaxy in the larger cluster. In the real Universe, this gas can be detected using radio telescopes and is the fuel for star formation and the evolution of galaxies.
Credit: Chris Power, ICRAR/UWA.
The supercomputer ‘Gadi’ that will be used for the research at NCI Australia, commissioned in early 2020.
Credit: NCI Australia.
Contacts
A/Prof. Chris Power (ICRAR / University of Western Australia)
Ph: +61 478 906 421 E: chris.power@icrar.org
Kirsten Gottschalk (Media Contact, ICRAR)
Ph: +61 438 361 876 E: kirsten.gottschalk@icrar.org
