A new National Geographic television documentary, Inside the Milky Way, includes an interview with UC Santa Cruz physicist Joel Primack and video visualizations from Primack's research on galaxy formation. The program, which will "tell the story of our galaxy," premiers on the National Geographic Channel on Sunday, October 24, at 9 p.m.
Primack said he and his graduate students were interviewed at NASA Ames Research Center, where they use NASA's most powerful supercomputer to simulate the evolution of structure in the universe. During the interview, they discussed their latest project, called the Bolshoi simulation, which is the highest-resolution large cosmological simulation yet and is becoming the basis for a new generation of cosmological models. Primack said the film crew captured a striking visualization of the Bolshoi simulation displayed on the "hyperwall," a computer-intensive wall of screens used at NASA Ames to visualize projects involving massive amounts of data.
National Geographic Channel describes Inside the Milky Way as "an incredible journey through space and time to see how different neighborhoods of our vast star city would appear if we could visit them close up."
