Closer to home, researchers toil to prevent storms raging on the surface of the sun from triggering massive power grid failures here on Earth.

Space science efforts like these are underway at universities and laboratories worldwide and are linked by a common factor: They depend on technology from Silicon Graphics.

Throughout North America, Europe, and Asia, the world's leading laboratories are working to find answers to some of the most fundamental questions in science. To fuel their efforts, they have turned to SGI for computation, visualization, and storage solutions.

"This is an exciting time in the scientific study of space," said Dr. Roger Blandford, professor of physics, Stanford University, and director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center's (SLAC) Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC).

"The universe is dominated by two unidentified substances - dark matter and dark energy - and decoding their role takes the very best scientific minds and computing technology. And yet while we work to understand the nature of the universe on an exceedingly large scale, we also have to study what is happening on a very small scale.

"This merger of astronomy and physics puts enormous pressure on the resources we use," said Blandford, "and this is why these high-performance computing technologies are so crucial to the work performed at KIPAC."

KIPAC relies on a 72-processor SGI Altix 3000 system and a 10TB SGI InfiniteStorage TP9300 solution to investigate the birth and death of the very first stars, as well as neutron stars, galaxy clusters and galaxy collisions.

"It boils down to getting difficult things done faster," noted Jeremy Bloxham, the principal investigator for Harvard University's studies of the physics of magnetic field reversals on Earth, and their impact on spacecraft and even passenger jets flying at high altitudes.

With a new 64-processor SGI Altix system, Bloxham's team of researchers hope to clarify how shifts in the Earth's magnetic polar fields, which occur every few thousand centuries and last 5,000 to 10,000 years, can impact navigation of aerial craft by exposing instruments and people to radiation at high altitudes.

"The more we know about how this occurs, the better we can shield the near Earth environment from cosmic radiation. With SGI solutions, we're working up to 20 to 40 times faster than we were with our previous UNIX server."

KIPAC and Harvard join other leading research institutions conducting astrophysics and cosmology research and education using SGI solutions based on its acclaimed scalable, shared-memory architecture. They include:

- Beijing Planetarium. Immersive, SGI Digital Space Theatre powered by SGI Onyx visualization computers and InfiniteStorage solutions.

- Cambridge University and COSMOS. Testing theories of universe's origins; research led by Stephen Hawking. Powered by SGI Onyx, SGI Altix, and SGI InfiniteStorage Shared Filesystem CXFS.

- NASA Ames Research Center. Space shuttle analysis to ensure safer space exploration. Powered by 10,240-processor Columbia Altix supercomputer and 440TB InfiniteStorage solution. SGI Reality Center allows Ames visitors to fly through galaxies and nebula, and virtually stand on the surface of Mars.

- NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Remotely piloting Mars Exploration Rovers. Powered by dual SGI Onyx visualization systems.

- Shanghai Astronomical Observatory and Nanjing Purple Mountain Astronomical Observatory. Numerically simulating galaxy formations. Powered by SGI Altix 350 systems.

- University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC). Identifying role of thermonuclear instabilities in supernovae using NASA's Columbia system in a GRID environment.

- University of Michigan's Center for Space Environment Modeling. Predicting when solar storms may impact communication satellites or power grids. Powered by NASA's Columbia supercomputer.

- University of Valencia. A range of astrophysics studies, from star formation to behaviors of neutron stars. Powered by 100-processor Altix supercluster.

- University of Washington. Developing models that chart the inception and development of the Milky Way. Powered by 24-processor Altix system.

- US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL). Studying "space weather" and the characteristics of near-space environment. Powered by 128-processor Altix.

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