Getting under the earth's skin . . .
If you've been reading recent posts on this blog about the HPC Wales high performance computer project, you might be wondering how it all helps researchers at our universities. Here is one case study from Cardiff - Tracking the movement of the Earth's tectonic plates is not easy. As we move further back in time, there are fewer clues about how the plates have moved on the Earth's surface. Creating a model of the entire planet requires hundreds of millions of calculations for each moment in time. It's a task Cardiff University's School of Earth and Ocean Sciences has only been able to contemplate with the help of High Performance Computing. Over the past two years, a PhD project at the School has tried to work out how the Earth has worked as a body for the past 300 Million years. Supervised by Dr Huw Davies, the Universities of Utrecht and Lausanne are also involved along with a major international company. The modelling work is based on concepts of mantle convection...