You may recall that last year I posted about the results of the annual Dirac Research Image competition for which I was one of the judges. For those of you who weren’t aware, DIRAC is a high-performance computing facility designed to serve the research community supported in the UK by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). I was honoured to be invited back to judge the competition this year.
As before, entries to the Research Image Competition were divided into two Themes: Theme 1 (Particle and Nuclear Physics) and Theme 2 (Astronomy, Cosmology and Solar & Planetary Science) and scores were allocated by the judges based on visual impact and scientific interest. Once again, the standard was very high, but there were clear winners in each category. Here they are:
LUCA REALI, MAX BOLEININGER, DANIEL MASON, SERGEI DUDAREV (UKAEA)
DATA INTENSIVE CAMBRIDGE
Molecular dynamics simulations of high-dose radiation damage in tungsten to understand the evolution of the material under fusion reactor conditions. Blue spheres are vacancies (missing-atom defects), orange spheres are interstitials (extra-atom defects). Lines are dislocations (linear crystallographic defect).
Softwares: LAMMPS for simulations, Ovito for the rendering.
JOSH BORROW, FLAMINGO TEAM
MEMORY INTENSIVE DURHAM
The most massive galaxy cluster in the flagship, 2.8 Gpc, FLAMINGO volume, with each side of the image spanning 40 megaparsecs. Each colour represents a different gas density contour, highlighting the extremely complex spatial and velocity structure of the gas within the cluster. At the center, the gas serendipitously aligns to produce a love heart.
The image was created with DiRAC supported software SWIFT and swiftsimio.
For more details about these images and the other entries see here. The 2024 Dirac Calendar features a selection of the entries.
Congratulations to the winners and indeed all the entrants!
