TALK ABSTRACT:
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High-performance computing is advancing our understanding of fundamental 
processes occurring today in the solar system, including asteroid collisions,
tidal disruption, and planetary ring dynamics.  The same techniques are used
in models of planet formation, with the ultimate goal of understanding the 
origin of life, one of the cornerstones of NASA research.  Significant advances
are being made on these topics using commodity clusters that provide high
performance at low cost, coupled with parallelized algorithms that distribute
computations across multiple nodes.  I will discuss a cluster I put together 
for the Department of Astronomy at the University of Maryland, the parallel 
tree code I run on it, and some of the science topics we are working on, 
with a focus on planetesimal dynamics.