A computer facility just launched may help in unravelling some long-standing scientific riddles.

The High Performance Service for Physics, Astronomy, Chemistry and Earth Sciences at University College London will provide local high-performance computing for physical sciences research.

HiPerSPACE will house Origin 2000 computers, which can carry out 50 billion calculations per second and which have a memory capacity of 30 billion bytes.

The centre, supported by the Joint Research Equipment Initiative and the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, will allow a deeper understanding of earth processes and precise simulation of materials at the atomic level to bring about major advances in earthquake prediction.

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Other gains will include rapid strides in nano-technologies, thanks to an important collaboration between some of the UK's leading computational scientists and the computer company SGI.

Science minister Lord Sainsbury, who was at the launch, said: "Access to sophisticated computer modelling and simulation is often one of the criteria that separates good quality research programmes from those that are truly world class."

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Simulation and computational techniques are crucial for technological advances in many commercial areas and the Foresight initiative recognised this as a priority.