Black holes have generated an incalculable amount of curiosity since they were first theorized in astronomy many centuries ago. How do they work? What effect do they have on space, time and matter? How old are they? Do they die?

Of course, these are surface-level questions about one of the most complex phenomena in outer space. But, like their subject, they do a fantastic job of pulling people in.

Andrew Chael is diving deeper into black holes through high-performance computing. The associate research scholar at Princeton University and his research group used ACCESS-allocated resources to complete black hole simulations on the Stampede2 and later the Stampede3 supercomputers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC), “modeling the dynamic interplay between high-energy plasma, powerful magnetic fields and the overwhelming pull of gravity near these cosmic giants.”

I’ve been using XSEDE, and now ACCESS resources at TACC since graduate school. It’s been the primary academic supercomputing center that I’ve run simulations for my research. These systems were both extremely easy to use with my code.

-Andrew Chael, associate research scholar at Princeton University and a fellow of the Princeton Gravity Initiative

Going further than typical black hole simulations, which treat electrically charged particles of protons and electrons in the plasma surrounding the black hole as a single fluid, these new interactions were reported in a study published in February in the Monthly Notices of the Astronomical Society.

You can read more about this story here: Beyond the Shadow of a Black Hole

Resource Provider Institution(s): Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC)
Resources Used: Stampede2, Stampede3
Affiliations: Princeton University
Funding Agency: NSF
Grant or Allocation Number(s): Allocations:PHY240214, AST190053 and #1548562 and #2320757

The science story featured here was enabled by the U.S. National Science Foundation’s ACCESS program, which is supported by National Science Foundation grants #2138259, #2138286, #2138307, #2137603, and #2138296.