A Supercomputing Revolution may make Star Trek's Warp Drive Possible

For all you Captain Kirk and supercharged workstation fans out there, moving faster than the speed of light may become a reality. The idea is related to the theory that the fabric of space (called space-time), can be manipulated to permit objects to move faster than photons of light.

Harold White, a NASA scientist believes he has created a feasible model for a warp drive. Piggy-backing off of the original model by Alcubierre, which consisted of a football-shaped craft attached to a ring that would constantly revolve around it. The ring would be made of some kind of exotic matter that would cause space-time to warp into a bubble. This bubble theoretically allows for the spaceship's engine to compress the space ahead of it and expand the space behind it. The ship would essentially move to another place without actually moving, pushing the space behind it. The problem with the old theory is that the mass-energy of Jupiter would be the amount needed to create the bubble.

 
White has transformed the original theory by suggesting the ring be more of a donut shape than flat. He has additionally suggested that "the intensity of the space warps can be oscillated over time," which would reduce the required energy for the craft. White and his team have been doing "tabletop experiments" using a "laser interferometer," essentially making mini-space-time warps.
If technology runs with this theory, Earthlings could potentially visit other stars on a craft about the size of the Voyager from 1977 and travel at 10 times the speed of light.  Can you imagine the speed of the high performance server on that craft?

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What's Shaking? It is Scientific Computational Modeling of Earthquakes.

Scientists utilize high-performance servers  and high-performance clusters to measure and predict the environment's activity. Earthquakes are an abnormal weather occurrence that certainly plagues the PSSC Labs headquarters in California on a pretty normal basis. While little is known about predicting earthquakes, theorists are beginning to question if oil drilling has had an effect on the increase of earthquake frequency. Oil & Gas computational modeling has been looked at as a tool for future studies. Whatever the reason behind the earthquakes, what is fascinating is how they happen.

An earthquake occurs when two blocks of the earth suddenly slip past one another on a "fault plane." While the edges of the faults are stuck together, and the rest of the block is moving, the energy that would normally cause the blocks to slide past one another is stored. When the force of the movement finally overcomes the friction of the jagged edges, the faults unstick and the stored energy releases causing the vibrations. The location below the ground where the earthquake begins is called the "epicenter," where there are three phases of shocks that occur. There are "foreshocks" which happen before the earthquake in the same location, the "main shock" which is the largest and true core of the earthquake. Depending on the size of the "mainshock," aftershocks continue for weeks, months, or even years. The energy of any shock radiates outward from the epicenter in all directions in seismic waves, much like ripples in a pond. As the waves move,  they shake the Earth, and anything on it.

Navigate through our website to learn more about our  high-performance servers  and high-performance clusters that assist in storing this fascinating information on nature.

Photo Credit: earthquake.usgs.gov & Science Photo Lab

Raspberry Pi Structure Turns the Heads of Supercharged Workstation Engineers

Apple, blueberry, lemon meringue? There are so many kinds of pies out there, but the favorite of those working with supercharged workstations is the Raspberry Pi. And no, this isn't surrounded with delicious graham cracker crust – it is a credit-card sized Linux machine that has become an instant hit. For the first time ever, someone has interconnected dozens of these little devices to build a mega super computer. And what did they use for the glue? LEGOs.

Seven computational engineers at the University of Southampton in the UK ordered 64 Raspberry Pis and created a rack for their super computer that would help interconnect their 64 Pis. While the Raspberry Pi certainly does not have the performance of our Powerwulf Clusters, the number of networked devices gives it a pretty good surge of power that was built from the ground up with toys! Although it isn't the strongest, it is certainly the most adorable.

This project was basically a smaller scale of what we, at PSSC Labs, do when we create our high performance servers and ultimate storage solutions. Feel free to navigate through our website and learn more about the process of computer building on a large scale.

High Performance Computing happens more than ‘Once in a Blue Moon.’

Weather computational modeling and studies in astrophysics computing are progressing with the advent of high-performance computing. PSSC Labs supports research scientists in all varieties of the disciplines they study. Naturally, there was a lot of excitement when word spread about the appearance of a blue moon. The evening of August 31, 2012 brought a site to see.

A "blue moon" is the name given to the second full moon in a single month. It is a somewhat rare occurrence as it only happens once every three years.

Sometimes, however, the moon can appear to be visually blue in color. This hue is possible weather a moon is full or not. The event is caused by materials and particles in the atmosphere such as dust or smoke. The secret to witnessing a literal blue moon is by having the particles slightly wider than the wavelength of red light, with no other sizes present. On rare occurrences, volcanoes produce clouds that emit such particles. Forest fires also have the same effect, spreading a mixture of wide particles that create blue light. Most clouds pushed into the atmosphere contain a wider variety of particles, including many smaller than 1 micrometer. The smaller particles tend to scatter blue light. These clouds cause "red moons," which are much more common than a blue moon.

Navigate through the PSSC Labs website and learn more about the possibilities for high-performance servers and high performance clusters in these fascinating industries.

Photo Credit: Tomasjina/www.Space.com; www.pikespeakphoto.com/images/sunmoon/redmoon2.jpg

What is the Higgs Boson and why is it important to the Life Science Industry?

Users of PSSC Life Sciences Tools are talking about what could be the next big discovery in their industry. The Large Hadron Collider is a giant science instrument that utilizes some incredible hpc supercomputers, for studying the smallest existing particles. Researchers at the lab say that they are certain about the existence of the Higgs boson, or the "God particle." This is a never-before-seen subatomic particle that is allegedly the fundamental building block of the universe.

The theory of the particle was first proposed by a physicist names Peter Higgs in the 1960s to provide explanation to how particles obtain mass. The theory is that an energy field exists all around in the universe. As particles zoom around the field, they interact and attract Higgs bosons, which cluster in varying numbers. The more Higgs bosons that a particle attracts, the greater the mass will become.

While this discovery won't give human being the entire knowledge about the universe and its operations, it will fill a huge hole in the Standard Model that has been in place for over 50 years.

However, it is going to take some major effort and some intense computing power to track down the Higgs boson. Scientists describe them as elusive, is that they appear and disappear quickly and scientists are only able to study disintegrating remnants.

Finding a missing block in the Standard Model could possibly lead scientists to study dark matter: mysterious, invisible substance that adds up to five times as much mass as the ordinary atoms and particles to which we are accustomed. With the amount of information that can result from this potential discovery, science is going to need ultimate storage solutions for sure!

For more information on life science supplies, explore www.pssclabs.com.