World’s fastest supercomputer shows how black holes shape galaxies

Scientists have utilized Frontier, the world’s fastest supercomputer located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, to simulate how supermassive black holes influence the stability and evolution of galaxy clusters over billions of years. By modeling a black hole with a billion solar masses at the center of a galaxy cluster weighing a quadrillion Suns, researchers tracked the activity of black hole jets and their impact on the surrounding environment. These jets, which move at speeds up to 5% of the speed of light in the simulation, inject heat, dust, and gas into the cluster, regulating energy and preventing the collapse of these massive cosmic structures. The simulation required immense computational resources, including 700,000 node hours and over 17,000 GPUs, highlighting the unique capability of Frontier to handle such large-scale astrophysical problems. The study revealed new insights into the formation of gas filaments around galaxy clusters, phenomena previously observed but never successfully reproduced in simulations. These filaments arise from the turbulence created by interactions between cold gases, hot