Science: Wayne Pfeiffer and his colleagues at the San Diego Supercomputer Center didn’t mind working over the holidays on a proposal due 2 February to the National Science Foundation (NSF). They knew their counterparts at other NSF-funded supercomputing centers would be doing the same thing. And besides, the prize seemed worth the extra effort--a $200 million machine capable of performing at the petascale level (1015 operations a second) and, with it, leadership of the next generation in supercomputing.
The finding that the Saturnian moon may host layers of icy slush instead of a global ocean could change how planetary scientists think about other icy moons as well.
Modeling the shapes of tree branches, neurons, and blood vessels is a thorny problem, but researchers have just discovered that much of the math has already been done.
January 29, 2026 12:52 PM
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