DiRAC invited researchers to submit aesthetically inspiring and scientifically interesting imagery generated using the DiRAC facility during the previous three years. With two categories: particle and nuclear physics images; and astronomy, cosmology and solar & planetary science images, the full range of submitted images and the theme winners can be found below.
The 2022 Research Image Competition was sponsored by Q Associates, a Logicalis company, who awarded each category winner a £250 prize.
High-resolution simulations reveal that a Moon-like satellite can be immediately placed into a wide orbit by a giant impact, in contrast with traditional later growth from a debris disk. This opens up new options for the Moon’s initial orbit and interior, which could help solve mysteries like its inclination and Earthlike isotopes. The simulations were run with the SWIFT code on the DiRAC-3 Memory Intensive service (Durham; COSMA8). Rendered using Houdini, the colour, opacity, and emission are set by the particle material, density, and internal energy.
A space-time slice of the topological charge density distribution of a 128 times 64³ lattice field configuration (with periodic boundaries) from an ensemble of the SU(2) gauge theory with two flavours of Dirac fermion in the adjoint representation (also known as Minimal Walking Technicolor). Moving along the time direction from left to right, successive time-slices are also iterated using the gradient flow of the Wilson action, which removes the ultraviolet noise that would otherwise prevent computation of the configurational topological charge. This noise is clearly visible on the left, with the actual instantons (orange) and anti-instantons (blue) becoming visible at longer flow times to the right.
