January 25, 2002

Burglars Damage Britain's Most Powerful Academic Computer

A bizarre series of burglaries has left Britain's most powerful academic computer, housed at the University of Durham's Institute for Computational Cosmology, sidelined for months.

The $2-million "Cosmology Machine," which was switched on with great fanfare last July, is supposed to be able to replay the development of the universe. Using data about stars, galaxies, gases, and dark matter, it simulates the cosmic past by doing 456 billion calculations per second, tens of trillions of