Thinking Big

Donna Coveney/MIT

Researchers from across campus and curious passersby alike can now see science writ large on MIT's new viz wall, a 250-million-pixel programmable canvas in a Stata Center mezzanine. Funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation as part of the MIT Darwin Project, an effort led by senior research scientist Mick Follows to model marine ecosystems, the viz wall can display high-­resolution images and movies with more detail than is easily visible on a desktop system. Content ranges from visuali­zations of genome sequences to Chandra X-Ray Observatory images of radiation from black holes. Here, MIT researchers Oliver Jahn and Chris Hill view an animated depiction of the primary-production rate--the rate at which photosynthetic marine microbes create organic matter--after getting the 60-panel array of 30-inch LCD monitors up and running in the fall.