What if a black hole had an exhaust pipe, a place where the energy was released after it ate up all the matter in its vicinity? In a way, active galactic nuclei (AGNs) do have something that looks a bit like an exhaust pipe in the form of massive jets of energy. However, the phenomenon is still being studied for a better understanding of how these jets affect the space around them. These supermassive black holes live at the center of galaxies and are very active, especially when compared to other types of black holes. The power of the jets and winds that come off of an AGN is strong enough to change the shape, not only of nearby galaxies but of much farther celestial objects as well. A large collaborative group of scientists is working with ACCESS Resource Provider, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC), to simulate AGNs so they may better understand them.

Using PSC’s supercomputer, Bridges-2, a multi-institutional group that includes Harvard University, Columbia University, Caltech and the Flatiron Institute, among others, is creating simulations of AGN galaxies. The simulations will help the team determine the distinguishing characteristics between AGNs and the jets they release. A huge number of simulations need to be run to account for all the variables, so the team is making use of Bridges-2 power to run simulations simultaneously. 

I’m doing an extensive set of isolated simulations…Each of the runs roughly takes four to eight nodes. It’s not super-computationally expensive for each of the runs. But [thanks to Bridges-2] I can run many [of them] simultaneously…in the past year, I’ve done about two-thirds of my computational work on Bridges-2.

—Kung-Yi Su, Harvard University

The team’s work will assist scientists with future observations, especially as newer telescopes are developed that can see better and further with greater precision and detail. Astronomers will have a better understanding of what they’re seeing due to the study of the simulated black holes.

To read more about this research and about the specifics of what the team is trying to determine in their simulations, go to the original story: Bridges-2 Simulations Limit Explanations for Active Galactic Nuclei

Resource Provider Institution(s): Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC)
Affiliations: Harvard University, Columbia University, Caltech, Flatiron Institute
Funding Agency: NSF
Grant or Allocation Number(s): PHY220027

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.