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Article: SUPERCOMPUTER ACCESS GROWS SCIENTISTS LINE UP FOR CHANCE TO TACKLE PROBLEMS LONG CONSIDERED UNSOLVABLE
- Article from:
- The Boston Globe (Boston, MA)
- Article date:
- March 30, 1987
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1987 The Boston Globe. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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On the screen, tiny lights storm about like a swarm of crazed
bees.
As the film unreels, the lights -- an image generated by a
Cray X-MP supercomputer to represent a cluster of millions of stars
swirling in the heart of a galaxy -- gradually disappear into a
hole at the center, until only blackness remains.
The seven-minute clip, produced by two Cornell University
astrophysicists, pales in comparison to "Star Wars" and other
Hollywood space epics. There are no battling spaceships, no talking
robots, no laser duels.
But as a scientific advance, the film represents one of the
first fruits of a $143-million National Science Foundation
initiative to put so-called supercomputers into the ...