Supercomputers model key details of greenhouse gases and molecules relevant to automobile combustion

Supercomputers can calculate how a molecule’s atoms move, giving insights for astrophysics, fuel use, and more. To determine a molecule’s rotational and vibrational energies, chemists collect data about the positions of its atoms in space. The data is a table of numbers. Without a more clever approach to calculating the positions, the largest supercomputers are overwhelmed by six-atom molecules, for which the table would contain hundreds of billions of rows and columns. Thanks to chemists at Brookhaven National Laboratory, supercomputers can now calculate vibrational energies for larger, floppy molecules without relying on approximations.