Joshua Faber, Assistant Professor, SMS and Center for Computational Gravity and Relativity http://ccrg.rit.edu/people/faber Thursday, May 7, 2009 3:30 pm IT Collaboratory 17-3110 Black holes in a computer: garbage in, nothing out In this talk, I'll explain the basics of relativity, like how seemingly innocent statements like "The speed of light is the same for all observers" revolutionized our understanding of the universe. I'll introduce black holes, which are endlessly fascinating but difficult to deal with numerically. We've recently learned how to crash them into each other on a computer without the computer itself crashing, producing many scientific predictions and cool movies to boot. http://rc.rit.edu/rcss.html for further details including Access Grid information. -gurcharan -- ------------------------- Gurcharan S. Khanna, Ph.D. Director of Research Computing Office of the Vice President for Research http://rc.rit.edu Assistant Research Professor, Ph.D. Program Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences http://people.rit.edu/gskpop Founding Director, Interactive Collaboration Environments Laboratory Center for Advancing the Study of Cyberinfrastructure http://icelab.rit.edu --- Rochester Institute of Technology IT Collaboratory Bldg. 17, Room 3119 Rochester, New York 14623-5603 Phone: 585-475-7504 ~ Cell: 585-451-8370 Email: [email protected]