Caught the movie "Deep Impact" yet? Just how real-to-life does Steven Spielberg's blockbuster portray an asteroid striking the planet Earth? Computer scientists at Sandia National Laboratories think they can better approximate a real asteroid catastrophe. Using virtual reality techniques, decades of experience in shock physics, advanced computer programs, and the world's fastest computer, the scientists recently completed one of the largest hypervelocity impact physics calculations ever performed. In the computing scenario, an asteroid 1.4 km in diameter strikes the Atlantic Ocean 25 miles south of Brooklyn, NY. To model the event, the scientists broke up a 120-square-mile space that roughly corresponds to the New York City metropolitan area, the air above, and the water and earth below, into 100 million separate grids. Sandia's teraflops supercomputer then calculated what happened in each cube as the asteroid splashed down. The researchers then reassembled the cubes to produce a 3D movie of the collision. How did Spielberg do? According to the simulation, the impact would vaporize the asteroid, deform the ocean floor, and eject hundreds of cubic miles of superheated water vapor, melted rock, and other debris into the upper atmosphere and back into space. The debris would rain down over the world for the next several hours and form a high global cloud. The shock wave from the impact would level much of the New England region. E-mail dacrawf@sandia.gov.
Gigabit and PoE are two networking technologies moving ahead in tandem as industrial users power remote Ethernet devices such as IP security cameras at 1,000 Mbps over existing CAT5 cable.
New disc magnet motors fit into the design trend of stepping up to closed loop performance while maintaining the cost advantage of stepper motor technology.
At the Design News webinar on June 27, learn all about aluminum extrusion: designing the right shape so it costs the least, is simplest to manufacture, and best fits the application's structural requirements.
A new battery design, which replaces lithium with abundant and low-cost elemental sulfur, is still in its nascent stages but shows real promise for giving batteries more energy potential.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
Early in my career, I worked as a draftsman and remember the days of drawing on vellum with numbered pencils and Mylar with plastic lead. This was a fun experience in the sense that I ...
I've been using workstations for more than 10 years and love finding ways to get more performance from my system. With demanding professional applications that require more power each ...
A lasting memory from my first job as an engineer in an auto assembly plant is standing on hard concrete at six in the morning, vending-machine coffee clutched in hand, listening to ...
For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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