Human Echoes Podcast

“Not everybody gets a private tour of Argonne National Laboratory.” “I know. Thanks for showing me around.” “Will you remember this when you go back to school?” “Of course.” Annette smiles up at her uncle. They turn a corner and enter command central. Rows of black-capped processors fill the expansive computer room. Theo waves his hand at the machines. “This used to be the Sequoia Blue Gene Q. I modified her to run at 20.1 petaflops, and renamed her ‘Mira,’ after your aunt. She’s now the most powerful supercomputer in the world. Mira has 49,152 compute nodes, and 70 petabytes of disk storage – the fastest to date. And this is confidential,” Theo says, stooping to whisper. “I secretly programmed her to calculate the correct M-theory of the universe.” “M-theory?” Theo scans the room for late-working lab assistants. Seeing none, he continues. “The 11-dimensional string theory, birdie. The quantum structure of the universe.” He chuckles and taps Annette’s head. “Soon we’ll have the theoretical physics equation