By Andrea Gawrylewski
ARTICLE EXTRAS
Video: Frog neuromuscular junction
The International Headquarters of the Westinghouse Electric Company in Monroeville, Pa., is a black glass-paneled fortress dedicated to nuclear energy research. All except the basement, that is, where underneath the formidable security check-in desk, and the two towers of labs and offices and sunlit hallways, more than 4,000 Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) computer processors whir away, undisturbed.
In the basement, BigBen, the Cray XT3 supercomputer, ticks away about 21 trillion calculations per second. It's dark, and it's as loud as the engine room of a cargo ship; anyone inside must shout to be barely heard. The room is approximately the size of a hockey rink and just about as cold; pipes under the floor carry water at 9°C (48° F) to keep the computers from overheating. (As it stands, the computers produce enough heat ...
