Visual excerpt from the PBS HDTV ''Runaway Universe'', courtesy WGBH-NOVA and Tom Lucas Productions.The Adaptive Mesh Refinement simulation grid automatically refines into subgrids to develop small-scale features, generating over half a terabyte of data. We see gravitation for...

This artist concept depicts two white dwarfs called RX J0806.3+1527 or J0806, swirling closer together, traveling in excess of a million miles per hour. As their orbit gets smaller and smaller, leading up to a merger, the system should release more and more energy in gravitati...