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| Established | November 2002 (2002-11) |
|---|---|
| Purpose | Cosmology |
| Coordinates | 54°46′01″N1°34′30″W / 54.76694311327431°N 1.5749791848612393°W /54.76694311327431; -1.5749791848612393 |
Director | Shaun Cole |
Parent organization | Durham University |
| Website | icc |
TheInstitute for Computational Cosmology (ICC) is a research institute[1] atDurham University,England. It was founded in November 2002 as part of the Ogden Centre for Fundamental Physics, which also includes the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology (IPPP). The ICC's primary mission is to advance fundamental knowledge incosmology. Topics of active research include: the nature ofdark matter anddark energy, the evolution ofcosmic structure,the formation of galaxies, and the determination offundamental parameters.
The current director of the ICC isShaun Cole.[2] ICC researchers have played a central role[3][4][5] in the development of the standard model ofcosmology,Lambda-CDM model (ΛCDM). The complex nature of questions in cosmology often means that advances requiresupercomputersimulations in which a virtual Universe is allowed to evolve for13.8 billion years from theBig Bang to the present day. The simulation is rerun with altered pre-conditions or physics, until it matches theobserved Universe. This approach has required one of the most powerful supercomputers for academic research in the world, the "Cosmology Machine (COSMA)" as part of theDiRACsupercomputing consortium.[6]
Durham University's extragalactic astronomy group was founded in the late 1970s, and secured in 1984–5 with the appointments ofCarlos Frenk,Richard Ellis and Tom Shanks. A group researching theoretical cosmology grew steadily during the 1980s and 1990s, mainly funded by the UKParticle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC). A dedicated building for theoretical cosmology was then funded through private donations, principally from alumnusPeter Ogden, and opened in 2002 by the Prime Minister,Tony Blair.[7] The group has grown in these new facilities, and the ICC now hosts more than 60 researchers, including theoretical and observational cosmologists, as well as astroparticle physicists.[8]Although the ICC is strictly speaking a theoretical institute, theory and observations in cosmology are intimately interwoven. Uniquely amongst Durham University's Research Institutes, the ICC and IPPP are structurally integrated within an academic and teaching department,Physics. The physics department as a whole was awarded grade 5A in the 2001Research Assessment Exercise[9] (RAE) carried out by the UK government, with the international excellence of research in Astronomy and Particle Physics specifically highlighted. The department's research in Space Science and Astrophysics was rated as number one in Europe and fourth in the world by Thomson Reuters from its Essential Science Indicators (1998–2008).[10]
In November 2016, the ICC moved into the brand newOgden Centre for Fundamental Physics building, designed byStudio Daniel Libeskind. The new building now houses all three astronomy groups in the Department of Physics, including theCentre for Advanced Instrumentation and theCentre for Extragalactic Astronomy, as well as the Institute for Computational Cosmology.
The ICC's highest resolution simulations of the evolution of the Universe are performed on the Cosmology Machine (COSMA).[11] COSMA-5 was installed in October 2012,[12] as a hub of the UK nationalDistributed Research utilitising Advanced Computing (DiRAC) consortium.[13] COSMA-5 includes 6720 2.6 GHz Intel Sandy BridgeCentral processing unit (CPU) cores, 53,760 GB of RAM, and 2.4 PB of data storage; it is one of the most powerful supercomputers in the world.[6] The ICC acts as one of the two main nodes of the internationalVirgo Consortium forcosmological supercomputer simulations.
A founding goal of the ICC is to "stimulate young people to aspire to be the scientists of tomorrow".[14][15] A full-time outreach officer is employed to develop teaching materials that draw upon current research and coordinate aprogramme of activities in schools across the North East of England. The ICC has been involved in a number of outreach events aimed at communicating science to the general public, notably:
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