Supernova Explosion

Year: 
2015
Ranking: 
Honorable Mention
Artist: 
Donghao Ren (Graduate Student), Suoqing Ji
Department: 
Computer Science
Lab: 
Four Eyes Lab

Description

A supernova explosion is one of the most powerful events in the known universe. This fascinating image is a spatial-temporal depiction of a computer-simulated supernova explosion from a recent research project.

Details

In this space-time diagram, a binary white dwarf merger with a 40,000-mile-wide rotating plasma disk around it evolves for about 100 seconds, and finally explodes as a supernova, with shock propagating outward at 10% of the speed of light, releasing 10^44 joules of nuclear energy. The peak density and temperature reach 10^9 g/cm^3 and 10^9 Kelvin prior to explosion. Density (left) and the magnitude of velocity (right) are visualized. The vertical axis represents time, and the horizontal plane represents space. The image was rendered by a ray-casting algorithm in CUDA. The simulation was performed on a supercomputer.

CSEPSchuller LabCNSIUCSBMOXI