Another Ad Maiora (a year later)

I haven't contributed to this blog in a long time. I guess I just need to make it a routine. However, a routine would not be effective in celebrating even those events that remains rare such as PhD graduations.

Congratulations to Dr. Irene Balmes who passed her PhD defense this after-noon presenting her work on "Alternative Probes in Cosmology: Gravitational Lens Time-Delays & Dark Matter Halo Sparsity". Irene will soon move to Sao Paolo to start her first postdoctoral appointment at ICTP.

Ad maiora

Congratulations to Dr. Ixandra Achitouv who has passed her PhD defense this afternoon presenting her work on "Dark matter halo mass function: imprints of the statistics of the initial density field and non-linear collapse". Ixandra will soon move to Munich to start her first postdoctoral appointment in the Cosmology Group at the University Observatory of Munich.

The wonder of teaching through a rainbow

These days my head is taken by a number of research projects that requires solving very technical issues that have to do mostly with numerical computing. Finding the solutions and advance the projects require two things: deep thinking of the best way to implement numerical algorithms that represent the physics I want to investigate and coding them correctly. It is a quite painstaking exercise, which seems very far from the fun of doing physics. So, when the day is over I do really need some physics 101. Here, I found this beautiful lecture on the rainbow by an amazing professor of physics at MIT, Walter Lewin. The rainbow is a spectacular show of nature, but it will look much more spectacular after you watch this performance by Prof. Lewin.

How to Make Teaching Come Alive
Walter H. G. Lewin

EDECS-ERC "Starting Grant" latest news

The new academic year has just begun and the pieces of my ERC-Starting Grant EDECS, officially started last April, are slowly getting together. The last part of the DELL computing server that I bought for the project has been delivered this morning. Hence, soon I will be playing with some heavy numerical stuff. Moreover, a new PhD student and the first EDECS postdoc will soon join our group in Meudon. Linda Blot is going to start her PhD working with me on clustered Dark Energy models and cosmological simulations. Linda has recently received her master degree in Astrophysics and Cosmology from the University of Bologna under the supervision of Lauro Moscardini. Shankar Agarwal is going to join us early next year as EDECS postdoc. Shankar is about to defend his PhD thesis at the University of Kansas under the supervision Hume Feldman.

We are looking forward to start some exciting EDECS science project together 

DEUS Full Universe Run

The first simulation of the full observable universe has been completed by the DEUS team using 76056 cores of Curie Thin (80000 CPUs) supercomputer of the GENCI agency at TGCC center in France. The project has been selected among other grand-challenges in all domain of computational science by the PRACE call for tier-0 machines. The simulation has followed the evolution of 550 billion particles in a 21 Gpc/h simulation box for a concordance LCDM model. To realize this immense simulation the DEUS team has used at its extreme capacity Curie Thin designed by Bull. This run, which is the first out of three expected by the project, has produce 1.2 Petabytes of data, which consist of full-sky light cones (constructed without replica) from z=0 to z=30, 15 snapshots at several redshifts and a subsample of 2 Gpc/h at every coarse integration time step. A preliminary analysis has shown that at z=0 the Universe should not contain more than 6 clusters with mass larger than 10^15 solar masses.

To date, this is the largest cosmological simulations ever run.

EDECS - Postdoc in Cosmology at the Observatory of Paris

The cosmology group at the Laboratoire Univers et Theorie of the Astronomical Observatory of Paris invites applications for one postdoctoral position in the framework of the ERC-Starting Grant EDECS: Exploring Dark Energy through Cosmic Structures, coordinated by P.S. Corasaniti. Candidates with a background in numerical cosmological simulations, theoretical modeling of non-linear structure formation and/or expertise in comparison between observations and simulations are strongly encouraged to apply. The cosmology group has an active research program on several topics in cosmology. A common effort is devoted to the realization of large volume very high-resolution numerical simulations of dark energy dominated scenarios. The group has access to several super-computing facilities (IDRIS, CCRT and TGCC) and benefits from national and international collaborations. Group members are also involved in a number of observational programs such as the XMM-XXL cluster survey and the preparation to the EUCLID mission. The appointment is for two years beginning Fall 2012. Candidates should have a PhD in Physics/Astronomy by the starting date. The deadline for applications is 1 February 2012. Candidates should send a CV including list of publications, a statement of research interests, and arrange for three letters of reference to be sent to Pier Stefano Corasaniti via e-mail to EDECS.POSTDOC2012@obspm.fr. For further information contact EDECS.ERC@obspm.fr

Meeting "Structure of the Universe", Château de Meudon, 29-30 November 2011

The program « Structure of the Universe » supported by the Scientific Council of the Astronomical Observatory of Paris organizes a workshop the 29 and 30 November at the Château de Meudon, Meudon Campus.  

The goal of this two days meeting is to gather the community working on topics related to cosmic structure formation to exchange ideas through informal discussions. The program intends to facilitate the development of scientific collaborations on themes in which members of the Paris Observatory are actively involved. Presentations by local and external invited speakers will cover the following themes: « Milky Way and Local Group » , « Cosmic Reionization with SKA and LOFAR : Observations and Simulations », « Theory  vs Observations : Galaxy Formation and Large Scale Structures ».
Information about the program can be found on the meeting webpage.

Organizers:
Pier-Stefano Corasaniti, Paola di Matteo, Simona Mei, Yann Rasera, Benoit Semelin, David Valls-Gabaud