Codex serving an astrophysicist to simulate black holes

University of Arizona astrophysicist Chi-kwan Chan uses Codex to develop algorithms simulating particle movement around black holes for the M87 video.

At the University of Arizona, astrophysicist Chi-kwan Chan is leveraging Codex to develop and test algorithms simulating the movement of electrons and ions around a black hole. A member of the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration, which produced the first image of a black hole in 2019, his team is now aiming for the first video, that of the supermassive black hole at the heart of the M87 galaxy.

The bottleneck lies in plasma modeling. Near these celestial bodies, matter becomes so hot and diffuse that particles barely collide anymore and instead spiral around magnetic field lines. Tracking this corkscrew motion for colossal quantities of particles requires such fine timesteps that even the fastest supercomputers dedicate most of their power to it, to the detriment of the actual physics being studied.

Rather than exploring all mathematical avenues manually, Chan has entrusted Codex with proposing candidate algorithms and comparing them against known solutions. Many turn out to be incorrect, which he doesn't consider prohibitive: the key is that they remain testable and inspectable, whereas other systems deliver a result without exposing their process. Still in the experimental stage, this work could, if successful, enable the simulation of trillions of particles, a feat long inaccessible.