* Astronomy

Supercomputer to help reveal secrets of the Universe

Cosmologists at a leading international research centre hope a new £1.9m supercomputer will help reveal the origins and make-up of the Universe.
The Cosmology Machine Supercomputer (COSMA 4) will be officially opened at Durham University's world-leading Institute for Computational Cosmology (ICC) on Friday, June 24 by a representative from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.
The COSMA 4 has a memory of 15.4 terabytes or 15,400 gigabytes - the equivalent of 7,500 home PCs. The disk storage capacity is one petabyte or 1,000,000 gigabytes.
Scientists hope the machine will enable them to build upon the already groundbreaking work of the ICC which specialises in producing computer simulations of the evolution of the Universe and its galaxies, including the Milky Way, to enable researchers to understand why the Universe behaves as it does.
Among the theories the ICC will be testing is that of dark matter - a mysterious substance which scientists believe is required to explain galaxy motions that would otherwise violate the laws of physics.
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