Earlier Highlights (2)

In November 2001, the special-purpose computer GRAPE-6 was awarded the Gordon Bell prize for the highest performance on a actual physical problem. The calculation submitted was of a high-accuracy direction-integration simulation of a system with 1,100,000 stars. The sustained performance achieved was 11.55 Tflops on a 32-board GRAPE-6 system, with a theoretial peak speed of 32 Tflops. See our GRAPE newsletter #3, and my GRAPE page.


Also in November, a news feature on computational astrophysics appeared in Nature, vol. 414, pp. 12-14, in which our work with GRAPE-6 computers is mentioned as a distinct way to provide high speed; the accompanying photograph is of the award-winning GRAPE-6 cluster, mentioned above.


Also in November, the Danish National Research Foundation announced that they have accepted our application for the establishing of a Centre for Subjectivity Research, where I will be a Member of the Advisory Board. The centre opened in February 2002, in Copenhagen.


<- In October 2001, I organized a workshop on Deflecting Asteroids, together with Ed Lu, astrophysicist/astronaut, at his home base, the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX. Our report, together with background information, can be found on the web site b612.boulder.swri.edu.


Also in October, I presented the inaugural lecture for a colloquium on Science and Philosophy, organized under the joint sponsorship of the Philosophy and Physics departments at Seattle University. The title was Six ways to view the world: Looking through Windows from Science, Phenomenology, and Non-Duality.


In September 2001, I gave a talk in New York City at the loft of Pamela Kraft, from the Tribal Link Foundation, entitled Beholding the Eye of the Beholder; The Subject in Objective Science.


<- In August 2001, I taught part of the fourth annual Kira Summer School on Ways of Knowing.


In July 2001, a News Focus article on the GRAPE-6 was published in Science, vol. 293, pp. 201-203. The photograph of Jun Makino with a GRAPE-6 board was taken during the press conference accompanying our IAU Symposium.


<- Also in July, I co-chaired, with Jun Makino, Symposium 208 of the International Astronomical Union, on Astrophysical Supercomputing Using Particle Simulationss, Tokyo, July 10-13, 2001. Here is a slashdot news item.


In June 2001, I organized, together with Dave De Young, a two-day session on the role of simulations as part of a two-week Aspen meeting on the National Virtual Observatory.


Also in June, an article in New Scientist described our recent work on modeling the growth of supermassive black holes in nuclei of galaxies.