A paper released today describes in the greatest detail to date the atmospheres on distant planets.
Seeking the origins of what's in and beyond the Milky Way, researchers surveyed 25 exoplanets, bodies that orbit stars far beyond our solar system. Specifically, they studied hot Jupiters, the largest and thus easiest to detect exoplanets, many sweltering at temperatures over 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
Their analysis of these torrid atmospheres used high performance computing with NVIDIA GPUs to advance understanding of all planets, including our own.
Hot Jupiters Shine New Lights Hot Jupiters offer an incredible opportunity to study physics in environmental conditions nearly impossible to reproduce on Earth, said Quentin Changeat, lead author of the paper and a research fellow at University College London (UCL).
By analyzing trends across a large group of exoplanets, they shine new light on big questions.
This work can help make better models of how the Earth and other planets came to be, said Ahmed F. Al-Refaie, a co-author of the paper and head of numerical methods at the UCL Centre for Space Exochemistry Data.
Parsing Hubble's Big Data They used the most data ever employed in a survey of exoplanets - 1,000 hours of archival observations, mainly from the Hubble Space Telescope.
The hardest and, for Changeat, the most fascinating part of the process was determining what small set of models to run in a consistent way against data from all 25 exoplanets to get the most reliable and revealing results.
There was an amazing period of exploration - I was finding all kinds of sometimes weird solutions - but it was really fast to get the answers using NVIDIA GPUs, he said.
Millions of Calculations Their overall results required heady math. Each of about 20 models had to run 250,000 times for all 25 exoplanets.
They used the Wilkes3 supercomputer at the University of Cambridge, which packs 320 NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPUs on an NVIDIA Quantum InfiniBand network.
I expected the A100s might be double the performance of V100s and P100s I used previously, but honestly it was like an order of magnitude difference, said Al-Refaie.
Orders of Magnitude Gains A single A100 GPU gave a 200x performance boost compared to a CPU.
Packing 32 processes on each GPU, the team got the equivalent of a 6,400x speedup compared to a CPU. Each node on Wilkes3 delivered with its four A100s the equivalent of up to 25,600 CPU cores, he said.
The speedups are high because their application is amazingly parallel. It simulates on GPUs how hundreds of thousands of light wavelengths would travel through an exoplanet's atmosphere
On A100s, their models complete in minutes work that would require weeks on CPUs.
The GPUs ran the complex physics models so fast that their bottleneck became a CPU-based system handling a much simpler task of determining statistically where to explore next.
It was a little funny, and somewhat astounding, that simulating the atmosphere was not the hard part - that gave us an ability to really see what was in the data, he said.
A Wealth of Software Al-Refaie employed CUDA profilers to optimize jobs, PyCUDA to optimize the team's code and cuBlas to speed up some math routines.
With all the NVIDIA software available, there's a wealth of things you can exploit, so the team is starting to spit out papers quickly now because we have the right tools, he said.
They will need all the help they can get, as the work is poised to get much more challenging.
Getting a Better Telescope The James Webb Space Telescope comes online in June. Unlike Hubble and all previous instruments, it's specifically geared to observe exoplanets.
The team is already developing ways to work at higher resolutions to accommodate the expected data. For example, instead of using one-dimensional models, they will use two- or three-dimensional ones and account for more parameters like changes over time.
If a planet has a storm, for example, we may not be able to see it with current data, but with the next generation data, we think we will, said Changeat.
Exploring HPC+AI The rising tide of data opens a door to apply deep learning, something the group's AI experts are exploring.
It's an exciting time, said Changeat, who's joining the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore as an ESA fellow to work directly with experts and engineers there.
It's really fun working with experts from many fields. We had space observers, data analysts, machine-learning and software experts on this team - that's what made this paper possible, Changeat said.
Learn more about the paper here.
Image at top courtesy of ESA/Hubble, N. Bartmann
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
13/05/2026
New Adobe Premiere Color Grading Mode Accelerated on NVIDIA GPUs
Joel Pennington May 13, 2026
0 Comments
New NVIDIA RTX-accelerated features streamlin...
13/05/2026
Grass Valley announced that dB Broadcast has delivered new IP-based outside broadcast (OB) trucks for Cloudbass, featuring Grass Valley LDX 100 Series cameras a...
13/05/2026
Ikegami will exhibit the latest additions to its wide range of broadcast production cameras, control units, viewfinders and monitors on stand 5D3-1 at Broadcast...
13/05/2026
FISE, working with the founding members of the XR Sports Alliance (XRSA), Accedo, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and HBS, have collaborated to develop an immersive...
13/05/2026
Canon Unveils New EOS R6 V Full-Frame EOS Camera and RF20-50mm F4 L IS USM PZ Bu...
13/05/2026
Boston Conservatory at Berklee Honors Beth Morrison and Moses Pendleton at Comme...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
13/05/2026
Creative software developer Foundry today announced the latest developments on Nuke Stage. A purpose-built application for end-to-end virtual production and in-...
13/05/2026
A definitive portrait of one of Ireland's most influential musicians
New TV documentary airs Monday 18 May on RT One and RT Player at 9.35pm
Watch the...
13/05/2026
Agentic AI is changing the way users get work done. Following the success of OpenClaw, the community is embracing new open source agentic frameworks. The latest...
13/05/2026
Reinforcement-learning agents - AI systems that learn by trial and error - can c...
12/05/2026
Beyond the Hype: A Strategic Post-Hoc Analysis of NAB 2026 If NAB Show 2026 had an underlying theme, it was a quiet, industry-wide pivot from the high-energy sp...
12/05/2026
Guntermann and Drunck (G&D), a Panoptec Technologies Group company, and CT Square, led by Chandresh Shah, have announced a joint venture to distribute G&D and V...
12/05/2026
With 30 days until the start of the FIFA World Cup 2026, Telemundo, the exclusive Spanish-language home of the tournament in the United States, has announced th...
12/05/2026
The NHL has announced the return of Stanley Pup for its third consecutive year, a 90-minute special featuring adoptable rescue dogs competing on a miniature rin...
12/05/2026
NBCUniversal presented its 2026 Upfront to advertisers at Radio City Music Hall, detailing upcoming programming across NBC, Peacock, Bravo, and Versant properti...
12/05/2026
FOX Sports has announced funding for the Fandom and Social Connection Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Publ...
12/05/2026
TNDV and Live Media, both divisions of Live Media Group, supported live broadcast coverage around NCAA Final Four weekend in Indianapolis, including the March M...
12/05/2026
The European Football Alliance (EFA) has announced a content distribution agreement with Fubo Sports Network, the free ad-supported streaming TV (FAST) channel ...
12/05/2026
For the first time, Spanish-speaking fans in the U.S. will have two separate tel...
12/05/2026
CP Communications led a comprehensive spectrum management initiative on behalf of Churchill Downs during Kentucky Derby week, coordinating RF assets across the ...
12/05/2026
LiveU has announced a strategic partnership with DRONERESPONDERS, a 501(c)3 non-...
12/05/2026
Open Broadcast Systems has announced that BMC TV, a specialist in IP transport of broadcast content, has selected the Open Broadcast Systems 5G Flyaway solution...
12/05/2026
NEP Europe, part of NEP Group, has announced it will deliver broadcast solutions...
12/05/2026
Grass Valley has announced continued collaboration with Ravensbourne University ...
12/05/2026
Stats Perform has announced the launch of Opta Pulse, an AI-assisted video creation and distribution platform for leagues, rights holders, and broadcasters. The...
12/05/2026
FOX Sports has announced a collaboration with Sesame Workshop to integrate Sesame Street characters into FOX Sports' FIFA World Cup 2026 programming. Conten...
12/05/2026
To date, NHL Productions has produced 19 broadcasts with commentary in American Sign Language
NHL in ASL (American Sign Language) may be just one show, but the...
12/05/2026
Google's Brian Albert: creators, athletes, highlights, nostalgia, second-scr...
12/05/2026
A still from Past Lives by Celine Song, an official selection of the Premieres program at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. (Courtesy of Sundance Institute | p...
12/05/2026
Spotify is where fans and artists come together, turning discovery into somethin...
12/05/2026
Features patented Marco-MMC clocking technology
Black Lion Audio's latest release combines the company's expertise in clocking with their renowned p...
12/05/2026
New Track Panel, sequencer upgrades & more
Following their recent public beta release, Reason Studios have announced the full release of Reason 14. With the...
12/05/2026
One month to go! SBS reveals expansive FIFA World Cup 2026 lineup beyond the pi...
12/05/2026
Rohde & Schwarz presents its advanced solutions for power electronics testing at...
12/05/2026
aconnic AG (ISIN: DE000A0LBKW6), Munich, has developed a modified fund raising p...
12/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
12/05/2026
Tyrell Corporation, specialists in high-end live sports and entertainment broadcasts, was tasked with delivering compelling broadcast coverage of premier equest...
12/05/2026
Registration is now open for IBC2026 as the global media, entertainment and technology community prepares to converge on the RAI Amsterdam from 11 14 September ...
12/05/2026
Ross Video, a global leader in live video production technology, will present its latest innovations and integrated production workflows at BroadcastAsia 2026, ...
12/05/2026
500 selected leaders from around the world across start-ups, corporates, and venture capital. Over 50bn in assets under management among attending investors, a...
A paper released today describes in the greatest detail to date the atmospheres on distant planets.
