90-Minute Symposium

090-031

Earth's History and Future Revealed at the Frontier of Scientific Computing

Session Start/End Time:

Friday, Feb 13, 2009, 8:30 AM -10:00 AM

HRC Columbus GH

Earth’s origins lie in events from the ancient universe whose dark voids were punctuated episodically by violent explosions. These provided the starting material, and time provided the stage for the emergence of each aspect of our current home. In what is actually a minuscule slice of overall time, within our lifetimes, our globe has undergone changes in its ecosphere that are arguably as dramatic and compressed on the time-scale of its evolution -- from cosmic dust to sustainer of human life -- as any that have occurred previously. It is now clear that humans are a major driving force for these changes. With the advent of advances in computational science made possible by advances in computer technology and computer science, we at last have tools to understand our origins and to reckon the consequences of these human driving forces on a time-scale that is comparably compressed. This symposium will explore both the basis for and the use of these computational tools that may yet provide us with details of our origins and timely indicators of what we must do to temper the forces that may interrupt the orderly evolution set in motion in those primordial times.

Organized by:

Norman Chonacky, Yale University, New Haven, CT

Presentations:

  Symposium Organizer--Norman Chonacky, Yale University, New Haven, CT

  Opportunities and Challenges in Petascale Computing--Thomas H. Dunning, National Center for Supercomputing Applications, Urbana, IL

  Using Simulations To Learn About Cosmic Evolution and Its Connections to Earth's History--Robert Rosner, Argonne National Laboratory, Chicago, IL

  The Future for Climate and Earth System Models with Petaflop and Beyond Computing--Warren M. Washington, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, CO