Wired: Best science visualisation videos August 20, 2009
Posted by sarah in: astro 2.0, science , trackback
Wired Science have just posted a great collection of science visualisation videos. Go check them out! My favourite one is this simulation of a Type Ia supernova by scientists at the University of Chicago. More information and movies are available at the group’s webpages. The paper describing the simulations in detail can be found on astro-ph or via the link below.
Visualising data in astronomy is very difficult because of the scales involved, both in space and time. But good visualisations are essential to scientists’ understanding of physical processes. With the data volumes from our observatories expanding rapidly as our telescopes get bigger, it will become increasingly hard to represent the masses of information visually, and this is an important challenge for astronomers and developers to overcome in the next decade.
Video: DOE SciDAC Program/Brad Gallagher, George Jordan, Dean Townsley, Robert Fisher, Nathan Hearn, Jim Truan and Don Lamb
Jordan IV, G., Fisher, R., Townsley, D., Calder, A., Graziani, C., Asida, S., Lamb, D., & Truran, J. (2008). Three‐Dimensional Simulations of the Deflagration Phase of the Gravitationally Confined Detonation Model of Type Ia Supernovae The Astrophysical Journal, 681 (2), 1448-1457 DOI: 10.1086/588269
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So what is new from the simulation?
Well first of all this work was done in 2007 – so right now it’s not “new”. At the time, if I understand it correctly, it marked the first time that a Type Ia supernova was modelled in 3 dimensions, without having to insert a detonation event into the simulation code. When a white dwarf begins to explode, its material begins to burn from the inside out (the deflagration phase). As this burning reaches the dwarf’s surface (in about 1 second!), the actual explosion, or detonation, occurs.
Earlier 3D simulations were unable to reproduce the transition from deflagration to detonation in a natural way, i.e. by the physical conditions of the simulations itself. Modellers had to tell the code in an ad-hoc way that a detonation would take place. This simulation was the first to do this fully in 3D.
There are several models for how this kind of supernova actually proceeds, and this simulation follows the scenario of a gravitationally bound detonation. The astro-ph paper I linked to above explains what this entails. An earlier paper on this model is here.