Illustration par défaut

The Joseph Fourier prize 2012 awarded to the Dark Energy Universe Simulation DEUS team of the Observatoire de Paris

2 July 2012

For many years now, six scientists from the Observatoire de Paris, the CNRS and the Paris Diderot University have been working on the simulation of the Universe taking into account the presence of dark energy. On Wednesday, 27th of June 2012, they will receive the Joseph Fourier-Bull prize of 15 000 € for the results they have obtained since April 2012 with the first model of the evolution of the "the whole observable Universe, from the Big Bang to now" using the supercomputer Curie.

The Dark Energy Universe Simulation -DEUS - project

The whole cosmos : from the idea to the equations. For the last two months, six scientists from the “Laboratoire Univers et Théorie » - LUTH1 - from the Observatoire de Paris have been trying hard to recreate the history and structure of the whole visible universe using the most powerful supercomputer currently available in France: the Curie machine of the civil society GENCI (“Grand équipement de calcul intensif”, consists of 92 000 processors calculates at the rate of up to 2 million billion operations per second (2 petaflops). It is being commissioned at the « Très grand centre de calcul TGCC » (the Very Large Computer Centre) of the CEA, a Bruyères-le-Châtel (Essonne).

Two cosmological models that include dark energy and dark matter have been tested so far. A third will follow this summer. This constitutes a major contribution to the application of massive parallel computing to solve new cosmological questions and to respond to important scientific challenges.

For this work, the team has been awarded the Joseph Fourier prize, named after the French mathematician and physicist. The reward, financed by the computer specialist Bull and the civil society GENCI, will be handed over at the École polytechnique, during a forum on high performance computing - Teratec.

Furthermore, Jean-Michel Alimi, initiator and leader of this work, will present it in the name of the collaboration, on July 12th 2012, to Geneviève Fioraso, minister for research and higher education, during the inauguration ceremony of the supercomputer Curie, at Bruyères-le-Châtel.

Another simulation, concerning the molecule involved in Alzheimer’s disease, will also be presented at this ceremony by chemists and quantum physicists from the University of Toulouse.

1 The Laboratoire Univers et Théorie LUTH is a scientific department of the Observatoire de Paris. It is associated with the CNRS and the Paris Diderot University.

Videos
In the midst of the history of matter, space and dark energy

And still many more images created by numerical simulation...

The history of the Universe is simulated in these animations. They were made by editing the simulations and show the evolution of a part of the Universe (cube or cone) since the Big Bang. The matter of the initially homogeneous primordial soup condenses into filaments, super clusters and clusters of galaxies. The final result depends to some extent on the initial relative values of various parameters and ingredients (dark energy, dark matter, vacuum energy). The detailed results of the calculation, notably the number and size of the largest existing clusters of matter, cannot at present be compared to observation. That will become possible only after ESA’s Euclid mission, to be launched in 2019, is in operation.

To find these images, follow the DEUS links on:

In the media

  • New Scientist
  • France Info
    Du côté des étoiles - L’évolution de tout l’Univers, du big bang à nos jours, calculée par DEUS
  • Le Monde
  • Ciel & Espace : article to appear in the July 2012 issue.
The supercomputer CURIE can do 2 million billion operations per second; it consists of 92 000 processors, linked to a system which can save the equivalent of 7 600 year’s worth of MP3 files (15 Po) at a rate of 250 Go per second. Designed by Bull for the GENCI (Grand équipement national de calcul intensif), it is housed and used by the Very Large Computer Centre (“Très grand centre de calcul” - TGCC) of the CEA at Bruyères-le-Châtel. Supercomputers are becoming indispensable research tools to make increasingly detailed models and to simulate increasingly well complex phenomena beyond the reach of experiment. As the performance and capacity of supercomputers increase, so the models become increasingly detailed and the simulations improve and become more realistic.
(CNRS Photothèque /Cyril FRESILLON)
Jean-Michel Alimi and GENCI’s supercomputer CURIE designed by Bull.
(CNRS Photothèque /Cyril FRESILLON)

The team

  • Jean-Michel Alimi, directeur de recherche CNRS, et ses collaborateurs : Pier-Stefano Corasaniti, chargé de recherche CNRS, Yann Rasera, maître de conférences à l’Université Paris Diderot, Irène Balmes, Vincent Bouillot et Vincent Reverdy étudiants doctorants en astrophysique.

Collaboration

  • Les simulations ont permis de suivre l’évolution de 550 milliards de particules de matière représentant les galaxies. Elles sont réalisées sur le nouveau supercalculateur Curie de la société civile Grand Equipement National de Calcul Intensif GENCI détenue par l’Etat, le CEA, le CNRS, les Universités et l’INRIA.

Know more

News