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ART

Visualization of General Relativistic Data

The two-body problem in general relativity can only be handled by means of numerical supercomputer simulations, such as those developed and performed by the cooperation partner AEI (Max-Planck Institute for Gravitational physics in Golm, also known as Albert-Einstein Institute). Curved spacetimes are described via tensor fields, but appropriate visualizations methods are rare, especially when considering the huge data size in the region of 100GB and more in this specific case, and also due to time-dependency of these data. In the project ART appropriate visualizations for tensor fields are investigated. The possible range of applicability thereby is not limited to just general relativity, but of broad interest also in other domains like medical imaging.

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Project Goals

ART:
    1. (ger) Allgemeine Relativitätstheorie. The Theory of General Relativity.
    2. (eng) ART requires time, from the creator as well as from the spectator.

This cooperative project between ZIB and the Max-Planck-Institut für Gravitationsphysik was initiated on Dec. 1st 1997. Its goals are:

  • development of visualization tools for investigating and analyzing the operation of the programming code used for the numerical simulations of Einsteins field equations. Specific efforts concerning handling Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) data have lead into the Visualization of Data on Adaptive Hierarchical Grids project.
  • devising and implementing visualization methods for true physical quantities, especially techniques for tensor field visualization
  • development for interaction and controlling of simulation processes running on supercomputers connected over remote networks, (e.g. Potsdam-Berlin, Munich/Garching, Champaign/Illinois).
    These efforts lead to the German Gigabit Project TIKSL, which is specifically designed to develop tools for interactive control of remote processes.
    • The movie "Tackling the Riddles of Gravity" (66MB!) was under the first ten worldwide multimedia entries of the Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge, sponsored by the journal Science and the National Science Foundation.

    The movie " Numerical Relativity 1999" was a joint project together with Stefan Heusler and reflects the state-of-the art at the end of the last century.

Project Status

The ZIB visualization tool Amira was extended by the Numrel packages, providing an interface to the data produced by Cactus, a computational toolkit developed and used by AEI, WashU et. al. for numerical relativity. Amira was also tested and extended for handling large data files beyond the 2GB limit, data files of up to 600GB were actually used during production runs.

The Numrel extension modules enable

  • viewing of large, time-dependent 3D data, providing on-demand cached disk operations; the cactus-specific FlexIO format is natively supported, but also data written in HDF5 format. Using the remote Virtual File Driver from TIKSL, direct access to file subsections on remote servers (DPSS,HTTP) is possible.
  • For generic handling of a huge range of data via the same interface and making use of common functionality, Amira was extended by an experimental interface based on the theory of fiber bundles. This interfaces induced a suitable file layout in HDF5, which is available as a separate C library, see Fiber Bundle HDF5 Library for details concerning its capabilities and API.
  • special tensor field visualization techniques have been developed that are suitable for displaying relevant features in a numerically given, time-dependent spacetime. These techniques are also applicable in other scientific domains, such as medical imaging.


  • support for realtime display of isosurfaces, geodesics and full three-dimensional scalar, vector and tensor field data received via network from a remotely running cactus simulation, as it was demonstrated at SC98, Alliance98, SC99, TIKSL, IGrid 2000 and other situations.

Presentations

Image Publications

  • Nature. Gravitational physics - Black hole blockbuster. 2001.
  • National Geographic. Schwerkraftwellen erstmals sichtbar. 2001.
  • Bild der Wissenschaft. Schwarze Löcher - Die Monster im All. Bild der Wissenschaft, 2002.
  • Uwe Seidenfaden. Biggest Crashes in the Universe. Max-Planck-Research Notes, 1999.
  • Uwe Seidenfaden. Lauscher fuer das Urknall-Echo. Max-Planck-Forschung, 1999.
  • Lee Smolin. The new universe around the next corner - Theory of Everything. Physics World, 12:80p, 1999.
  • Les Tests de la Gravitation. Pour La Science (Edition Francaise De Scientific American), 2003.
  • Cover image. Trout Noirs. Science & Vie, 2002.
  • Henning Engeln. Orte ohne Wiederkehr. GEO Magazin, 2002.
  • Cover Image. . Spektrum der Wissenschaften - Jagd auf Gravitationswellen, 2000.
  • Karen Green. Colliding with a Supercomputing Record. Access magazine (alliance/NCSA), 12(3), 1999.
  • Max Planck Research. News Release. 1999.
  • NPACI. Globus Links Environment for Scientific Discovery. enVision magazine, 15(2), 1999.
  • Frank Fleschner. Signale von kosmischen Kollisionen.
  • GEO Magazin. Kosmischer “Crash-Test”. volume 11, 1999.
  • Max Planck Research. Collisions that Make Waves in Space. volume 1, p. pp43, 2002.
  • Ruediger Vaas. Die Magie der schwarzen Löcher. volume 7, p. pp.58, 2000.
  • Peter Hübner. From Now to Timelike Infinity on a Finite Grid.
  • Bernd Bruegmann. Numerical Relativity in 3+1 Dimensions.
  • Werner Benger. Beobachtungen im Datenraum.
  • Harnessing the Power of Grid Computing Computational - astrophysics code runs on 1500 processors at SDSC and NCSA.
  • Michael Odenwald. Signale vom Anfang des Universums. FOCUS, 23:pp.132, 2001.
  • Thomas Bührke. Astrophysiker berechnen Gravitationswellen. Sterne und Weltraum, 2001.
  • Institute of Physics. Poster on Quantum Gravity.
  • Der Klang der Schwarzen Löcher. volume 36, p. p.148, 2002.
  • Thomas Vasek. Reisen in Unmoegliche Welten. GEO Magazin, 2002.
  • Wolfgang C. Goede. Dieser Detektor soll den Urknall abhoeren. PM Magazin, 11:p.35, 2002.
  • Bernard Schutz. Gravity from the ground up. p. Cover, 2003.
  • Wayt Gibbs. Des ondulations dans l'espace-temps. p. pp.40, 2003.
  • B.Brugmann, A.M.Ghez, J.Greiner. Black Holes. PNAS, 98(19), 2001.
  • Henning Engeln. . GEO russia, 2:p.124, p.128, p.130, 2003.
  • Thomas Vasek. . GEO russia, 3:p.130, 2003.
  • Thomas Buehrke. Merlins Suche nach dem heiligen Gral der Physik. Berliner Zeitung, 2003.
  • The SEU2003 Roadmap Team. Beyond Einstein: From the Big Bang to BlackHoles. 2003.
  • Les Tresors De La Science. Science & Vie, , 2003.
  • Maxine Brown. Blueprint for the future of high-performance networking. COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM (CACM), 46(11):Cover, 2003.
  • The Future or Theoretical Physics and Cosmology. Cambridge University Press, , 2003.

Publications

  • Werner Benger, Ian Foster, Jason Novotny, Edward Seidel, John Shalf, Warren Smith, Paul Walker. Numerical Relativity in a Distributed Environment. Proceedings of the Ninth SIAM Conference on Parallel Processing for Scientific Computing, 1999.
  • G. Allen, T. Goodale, G. Lanfermann, E. Seidel, W. Benger, H.-C. Hege, A. Merzky, J.Mass\'o, J.Shalf. Solving Einstein's Equation on Supercomputers. IEEE Computer, 32(12):52–59, 1999.
  • M. Alcubierre, W. Benger, B. Bruegmann, G. Lanfermann, L. Nerger, E. Seidel, R. Takahashi. The 3D Grazing Collision of Two Black Holes. Phys.Rev.Lett., 87, 2001.
  • Hans-Christian Hege, Werner Benger, André Merzky, Friedbert Kasper, Thomas Radke, Edward Seidel. Schwarze Löcher in Sicht - Immersive Überwachung und Steuerung von Remote-Simulationen. DFN-Mitteilungen, 2000.
  • Werner Benger, Hans-Christian Hege, André Merzky, Thomas Radke, Edward Seidel. Efficient Distributed File I/O for Visualization in Grid Environments. Simulation and Visualization on the Grid, volume 13of Lecture Notes in Computational Science and Engineering, p. 1–6, 2000.
  • Werner Benger, Hans-Christian Hege, Stefan Heusler. Visions of Numerical Relativity. Proceedings of the 3d International Conference on the Interaction of Art and Fluid Mechanics (SCART2000), p. 239–246, ETH Zürich Switzerland, 2000.
  • Gabrielle Allen, Werner Benger, Thomas Dramlitsch, Tom Goodale, Hans-Christian Hege, Gerd Lanfermann, André Merzky, Thomas Radtke, Edward Seidel, John Shalf. Cactus Tools for Grid Applications. Cluster Computing, 4(3):179–188, 2001.
  • Gabrielle Allen, Werner Benger, Thomas Dramlitsch, Tom Goodale, Hans-Christian Hege, Gerd Lanfermann, André Merzky, Thomas Radtke, Edward Seidel. Cactus Grid Computing: Review of Current Development. Proceedings of Euro-Par 2001: 7th International Euro-Par Conference on Parallel Processing, volume 2150 of Lectures Notes in Computer Science, p. 817–824, 2001.
  • Werner Benger. Beobachtungen im Datenraum.
  • Werner Benger. Collisions De Trous Noirs. Pour La Science (Edition Francaise De Scientific American), 2003.
  • Werner Benger, Hans-Christian Hege. Tensor Splats. Conference on Visualization and Data Analysis 2004, 2004.
  • Werner Benger, Hans-Christian Hege. Analysing Curved Spacetimes with Tensor Splats. 10th Marcel Grossmann Meetings (in preparation), 2004.
  • Werner Benger. Visualization of General Relativistic Tensor Fields via a Fiber Bundle Data Model. Ph.D. thesis, Free University Berlin, 2004.
  • Werner Benger, Hauke Bartsch, Hans-Christian Hege, Hagen Kitzler, Anna Shumilina, Annett Werner. Visualizing Neuronal Structures in the Human Brain via Diffusion Tensor MRI. (2006).

Organizational Details

URL: http://www.zib.de/visual/projects/ART/ARTlong.en.html
Pagemaster: Werner Benger   19-Sept-2007
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