Yun Wang

In the mountain forests of China grows a tree that remembers the dinosaurs. Cathaya argyrophylla is a living fossil; its lineage split from pines over a hundred million years ago. But instead of a mighty long-liver, we have a vulnerable species: it grows slowly and often falls ill. Why — was long a mystery. The answer was found in 22 billion letters of DNA.

Studying the birth of galaxies requires simulating billions of years of dark matter growth and star formation — even supercomputers handle this slowly.