A Supercomputer’s Final Mission Will Help Us Understand the Universe

Mira is retiring to make room for the fastest supercomputer in the country — but first, it’s finishing its biggest project yet

The petascale Blue Gene/Q supercomputer, Mira, was constructed by IBM for Argonne National Laboratory. Photo: Argonne National Laboratory/CC BY 2.0

What will soon be America’s fastest supercomputer is expected to log online in 2021. Named Aurora, it will be capable of a quintillion (a…