How many PlayStation 3’s does it take to study a black hole? It sounds like the beginning of a joke, but one physicist at Dartmouth University finds it much more important than that.

During the holidays, many more of us made the leap to the next generation of gaming, but the older consoles continue to represent considerable promise for Associate Director of Dartmouth University’s Center for Scientific Computing and Visualization Research, Dr. Gaurav Khanna. In order to better understand the universe – specifically, the mysteries behind black holes – Khanna decided to assemble 200 PS3s for a low-cost supercomputer.

Khanna’s research focuses on the gravitational waves that are emitted when black holes collide. However, as this is impossible to witness through a telescope, scientists must rely on supercomputers to recreate the collected data in a more observable simulation.

Khanna says that a main reason why he chose the PS3 console over any other was because he could install a preferred operating system (his, being Linux) on it, but expense was not left out of the equation.

“Science has become expensive. There’s simply not that much money going around, either at the university or the federal level. Supercomputing allows scientists to make up for the resources they don’t have.”

In 2007, Khanna used only 16 consoles to create a system that modeled black hole collisions. In 2010, that work inspired the Air Force Research Laboratory to network 1,716 PS3s in its own work on urban radar surveillance.

My Opinion:

Many people don’t realize it, but the development of new gaming hardware extends far beyond the implications of a title’s frame-rate or the number of pixels on-screen. Even if it’s older tech, the systems we use for entertainment can apply to a wide array of other practical uses. The last generation certainly has some stellar gaming capabilities. Some people are just better at pulling that power out of the box.

Jordan Loeffler is an Associate Writer for MONG who drives a 2006 Pontiac Vibe with Minnesota license plates even though he lives in Portland, OR. She’s seafoam green, and she drives like a wave. You can follow him on IGN and on Twitter.