Slashdot Mirror
Simulated Universe
anonymous lion writes "A story in the Guardian Unlimited reports on The Millennium Simulation saying that it is 'the biggest exercise of its kind'. It required 25 million megabytes of memory to take our universe's initial conditions along with the known laws of physics to create this simulated universe." From the article: "The simulated universe represents a cube of creation with sides that measure 2bn light years. It is home to 20m galaxies, large and small. It has been designed to answer questions about the past, but it offers the tantalising opportunity to fast-forward in time to the slow death of the galaxies, billions of years from now."
I think my PC can handle it.
The University of Wisconsin has deployed 200 TB of storage for support of similar types of experiments as part of the Grid Laboratory of Wisconsin.
Brief article, with pictures:
University of Wisconsin deploys nearly 200TB of Xserve RAID storage (Google cache)
The storage is used for, among other things, particle physics simulations in support of research projects at sites such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. More information on GLOW and its initiatives can be found here.
Text of the above article:
The University of Wisconsin - Madison has deployed 35 5.6TB Xserve RAID storage arrays in a single research installation as part of an ongoing scientific computing initiative.
The Grid Laboratory of Wisconsin (GLOW), a partnership between several research departments at the University of Wisconsin, have installed almost 200TB, or 200,000GB, of Xserve RAID arrays. As a comparison, 200TB of storage is enough to hold 2.75 years of high definition video, 25,000 full length DVD movies, 323,000 CDs, 20 printed collections of the Library of Congress, or over 1000 Wikipedias.
The GLOW storage installation is physically split between the departments of Computer Sciences and High Energy Physics. Each Xserve RAID is attached to a dedicated Linux node running Fedora Core 3 via an Apple Fibre Channel PCI-X Card and is either directly accessed via various mechanisms, such as over the network via gigabit ethernet, or aggregated using tools such as dCache.
The storage is primarily used to act as a holding area for large amounts of data from experiments such as the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) and ATLAS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
Aside from the GLOW initiative, the university also has Xserve RAID storage systems in use in other areas as well.
Full disclosure: I am the administrator of alienraid.org and am affiliated with the University of Wisconsin.
"25 million megabytes of memory"
man, just when i thought 2 gigs was a lot...
"What does slashdotting mean?"
"You've never heard of slashdot?"
"I know it makes websites not work."
Whoa this is slashdot - news for nerds, convert to metric please, :P
or least use Giga or Tera
Just type "FUND" a few hundred times.
Do it before you build anything, because it causes earthquakes.
there's more than one way to do me.
isn't how much memory longhorn need to run?
Science is but a perversion of itself unless it has as its ultimate goal the betterment of humanity. -Nikola Telsa
I thought that they really hadn't even figured out how the universe worked. They have stuff like stars that are older than some estimates of the universe's age, and missing matter in the form of dark matter that they can't account for. How are they supposed to simulate the universe, if the model they have is so badly flawed.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
#top
PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE STAT LIB %CPU %MEM TIME COMMAND
561 ganesh 13 0 58876 25000000M 1044 S 0 0.7 95.1 68:51 universe
I think they deserver a good smiting.
So when will Google Maps be available for this universe?
What if we're in a simulated universe, simulating other universes?
Whoaaa.
Pass the bong, dude.
Now we're going to /. the cosmos.
Faith: n. -- That human impulse that drives them to steal appliances when the power goes out
This seems like a problem for BlueGene to solve, lets email the raw data input files to the group at LLNL they can do all the calculations in a matter of seconds and then tell us why the answer is 42...! There seems to be too much data involved, seems like a plot by the storage companies to sell crapp SATA disks and bad RAID cards.
I always though that a computer large enough to handle a simulation of the universe would allow us to predict the future, even at individual level if the simulation was advanced enough.
And then I realized that the smallest simulation of the universe would probably be the size of the universe.
It got very confusing at that point.
They can simulate the universe but can't withstand a slashdotting? ...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
I suggest we scorch the sky now to keep this machine from ruling us.
25 Million MB? And you thought *your* machine took a long time to POST!
Ho Hum ..... If you REALLY want to impress
people, then design a simulation of how
corporate management ( and IT in particular)
thinks and behaves.
Denial is not a river in Egypt
They're talking about 25 TB of RAM, not storage. 25 TB of core is pretty damned huge even if it is spread across a giant cluster.
200 TB of online storage isn't that impressive. Sorry.
Terabyte
--From the article... "It is the biggest thing we have ever done," said Carlos Frenk of the University of Durham. "It is probably the biggest thing ever in computational physics." --I would have thought so :)
"For the first time we have a replica universe which looks just like the real one. So we can now for the first time begin to experiment with the universe."
--Exxxxxcelllllllent!! That sounds like my kind of experiment.
Seriously though, this looks like it will finally help us make progress on the Dark Matter/ Negative Energy questions.
It'll save him having to leave his desk.
I think they still have some work on that one, but maybe.
They should invent some word to make it easier to say 25 million mega..oh, don't worry.
The Total Perspective Vortex, (Retaurant at the End of the Universe for the uneducated) wherein we are a microscopic dot on a microscopic dot. Are we sure we can handle this concept?
Talking to geeks is like eating jello with a chainsaw, interesting, but painful.
Prophet?
Journalists will use it to work up stories without having to leave their offices. The only thing we need now is a piece of fairy cake.
I got more pr0n than that.
printf($randomline(sigs.txt) \n "-- "$randomline(authors.txt));
-- myself
be 42
"25 Terabytes [...] of stored output"
And when you realize that you're an infinitesimal dot on an infinitesimal dot, you'll go completely stark raving mad. Unless you're in a personal pocket universe, of course, in which case you're the most important thing in it.
[
RTFA.
25TB of *stored output*.
http://www.pparc.ac.uk/Nw/millennium_sim.asp
...am glad Slashdot doesn't specify "timely" in the service mark "News for Nerds." This was posted on at the BBC days ago. Otherwise, I'd have to say 'Sheessh.' Shee-
Microsoft calls it Windows XP. What? You're telling me it's not an actual universe simulation? Based on the system resources it uses, I thought it was!
Do you take the red pill or the blue pill...?
Uuuuhhhh... wouldn't the simulation have to contain the simulation? Isn't that an infinite loop? Oh no, I've gone cross-eyed.
If nothing else, it sounds like a memory leak waiting to happen.
EA announces!
The Sims: Universe!
I just scored 2100 in 3DMark, can I run it?
Recent advances in cosmology demonstrate that about 70 percent of our Universe currently consists of Dark Energy, a mysterious force field which is causing it to expand ever more rapidly. About one quarter apparently consists of Cold Dark Matter, a new kind of elementary particle not yet directly detected on Earth.
This is stated as fact, not theory, but how can it be a scietific fact if it can not be detected, measured, and independetely verified?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
I, for one, welcome our new Simulated Overlords.
"What does slashdotting mean?"
"You've never heard of slashdot?"
"I know it makes websites not work."
...with this pocket calculator stuff.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
I bet in some 20 years we will be able to build an incredible Beowulf with thousands of cell processors to do an even more detailed simulation -- one that would, e.g., include an Earth simulation!
Just imagine simulating Earth's formation, Prehistory, even History. It would be very cool...
Imagine simulation the events that made the 20th century... we could even simulate all the people like a giant The Sims. I bet the simulated dorks wouldn't be able to tell they were living in a simulation.
Hahaha, the fools!
Hey, wait a minute... what if... doh!
I'm guessing 25TB is just about right for the next version of Windows after Longhorn. Gotta keep up with the times ya know? ;-)
And if it does, the simulator in the simulated universe simulates other universe?
And if it does, does it include the simulator?
And this simulator...
Press DEL to enter setup.
In soviet Russia, the Universe simulates YOU!
"What does slashdotting mean?"
"You've never heard of slashdot?"
"I know it makes websites not work."
Thats about the size of the pc that holds my tv and movie downloads!
The simulated universe represents a cube of creation
It represents 4 simultaneous cubes of creation. Dumbass!
Will the answer of the simulation be 42?
We can only hope...
Eric C.
Assuming your assumptions and input are correct, of course.
Have you ever been to The 13th Floor?
If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
For anyone who has read Permutation City by Greg Egan, in the book a computer simulation like this ends up continuing to run in an alternate universe after the computer simulation is stopped in this universe; in this book, simulations like this end up creating new universes.
But this simulated universe has an intelligent designer, for sure!
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Does it simulate millions of geeks not having sex? :P
That's like asking 100 Chinese what they think of blue tablecloth. I think I'll go watch the downloads now. Which brings up another point. How come the site hasn't been /.ed? I thought "nerds" were into science. Or is that "geeks"?
--
Slow Down Cowboy!
Slashdot requires you to wait 2 minutes between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 7 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
Q? Is that you?
What?
Who cares about the end of the universe? Fast forward it to 2006 so I can make plans for next year.
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
At least this was going around when I was at Berkeley:
NEW OPERATING SYSTEM:
Because so many users have asked for an operating system of even greater capability than VM, IBM announces the Virtual Universe Operating System --- OS/VU.
Running under VU the individual user appears to have not merely a machine of his own, but an entire universe of his own, in which he can set up and take down his own programs, data sets, system networks, personnel and planetary systems. He need only specify the universe he desires, and the OS/VU system generation program (IEHGOD) does the rest. This program resides in SYS1.GODLIB. The minimum time for this function is 6 days of activity and 1 day of review. In conjunction with OS/VU, all system utilities reside in SYS1.MESSIAH. This program has no parms or control cards, as it knows what you want to do when you execute it.
Naturally, the user must have attained a certain degree of sophistication in the data processing field if an efficient utilization of OS/VU is to be achieved. Frequent calls to non-resident galaxies can, for instance, lead to unexpected delays in the execution of a job. Although IBM, through its wholly-owned subsidiary, the United States, is working on a program to upgrade the speed of light and thus reduce the overhead of extraterrestrial and metadimensional paging, users must be careful for the present to stay within the laws of physics. IBM must charge an additional fee for violations.
OS/VU will run on any IBM x0xx equipped with the Extended WARP Feature. Rental is 20 million dollars per cpu/nanosecond.
Users should be aware that IBM plans to migrate all existing systems and hardware to OS/VU as soon as our engineers effect one output that is (conceptually) error free. This will give us a base to develop an even more powerful OS, target date 2001, designated as 'Virtual Reality'. OS/VR is planned to allow the user to migrate to totally unreal universes. To aid the user in identifying the difference between 'Virtual Reality' and 'Real Reality', a file containing a linear record of multisensory total records of successive moments of now will be established. It's name will be SYS1.EST.
"Woah"
One hundred drives at 250GB each would be 25TB... what do they cost now, about $150 each or $15,000 for the lot. But then in research, it's really quality not quantity that's important.
25TB ain't enough to even hold a single feature film, let alone the universe.
Free Hans!
..and you fuckers are standing on it!
But does it explain why number 42 is so important?
You're telling me, I just hope enough people seed the torrent for the next month or so.
Now imagine applying that computer to the question, "What will your next result be?" The universe just ceased to exi
Would you find a giant turtle with four elephants on its back bearing the Discworld
When you simulate stuff as complex as our universe with the precision of such a project, if only one theory is wrong, one small theory, the entire set of conclusions will have to be revised or worse, tossed aside.
Goodbye cruel world, hello Otherland. :D
"All you have to do is be fragile and grateful. So stay the underdog." Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
simulate something they don't know the measurements of? Ha!!!!
HA!!!
Your simulated-universe are belong to nothingness... get it?
Have a good one.
===== "Every head is a different world so don't invade mine you FREAK!" smartSAGA said
Here here here!!!
:P TGIF.
Might need to start with brain scans of mgmt. Brain DUMPS of the core... yummeh.
But seriously. At some point, someone's got to put together a crash IT course or something for new/relatively new managers and directors (especially) in IT. We're a different lot... not bad, but we're not accountants or worse, fry vat engineers. *sigh*
Been a rotten week, can ya tell?
Back to Pariah.......
Sorry man... the Internet pooped on me.
How many libraries of Congress is that?
I INVENTED NIGGERS IS THIS SCIENCE? rslrfoijeroijeorjfoerjfojerjfoierwefwefwef
Also, I think Brahma might be insulted with Ganesh claiming to be the creator.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Will it find the Question? I mean, honestly, if Earth won't do it, the whole goddamn Universe ought to have a crack at it.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
Was it so hard to just say 25 terabytes?
"I'm not ashamed I can't function in society like I'm supposed to." - Paul Westerberg
Don't worry, typing "FUND" does not cause earthquakes. In fact if you do it early enough there is no earth to quake. However does cause 'big bangs', which can be devastating to an established universe.
A really massive MMORPG engine. Now, what about the storyline?
There you are, staring at me again.
Nick Bostrom's Simulation Argument offers pretty good proof for this idea. According to Bostrom, if simulation is indeed possible, then the odds that we're not already running in thousands of layers of simulation is next to nil.
Check it out. It's cool.
From what I understand, which isn't much... While attempting to emulate the universe using small scale quantum theory, M-Theory, or any string theory would be next to impossible due to the fact these equations just don't work on such a large scale. However, using special relativity I believe, and all the equations we have regarding larger scale spacial stuff, the law of large numbers causes everything to average into a realistic model. While you can't guarantee 100% accuracy I'm pretty certain that it'd come damn close. --- Not yet cool enough for a sig
71.3% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
It required 25 million megabytes of memory to take our universe's initial conditions along with the known laws of physics to create this simulated universe.
That's quite a bit of information pulled out of their a... about the initial state of the universe. Wanna bet the filled a few billion blanks?
So let me get this straight. We can put together enough hardware to simulate the universe, YET WE ARE UNABLE TO PREDICT THE FREAKING WEATHER.
Instead, put all those computers together to model the earth's weather and use the laws of physics to tell me if I should take off next Friday to play golf or schedule a trip to Disney in late August. Geez........
We can conclusively dis/prove the existence of god, when all simulation model successfully/fail to produce "intelligent life" as we know it in the simulated universe.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
If the earth simulator presupposes that the universes are slowly going to decay into entropy, what about the "force" that is causing the galaxies to accellerate away from each-other? I'd like to see it's prediction of what would happen on the other side of the asymptote.
Well, if we clustered several hundred thousand PS3's, we may reach Adams' 42(tb).
Let the commencement BEGINULATE!
I have a Macintosh. Will my slow thread-spawning hinder this simulation?
Join Tor today!
Since building a computer to simulate the universe would require more matter than is available in the entire universe (which would entirely ignore the computer itself and the effect it has on the containing universe), the physical resolution of this particular simulation must be much less than that of the real universe.
/. karma system is the way it is :-)
Which could explain why the
When coding the simulation of the universe you come across the simulating computer itself, you'd have to start all over and code the universe into the code of the computer.
So you'd never finish.
I thought that was EVE ONLINE....
MadOgre.com
Anyone set up a torrent for millennium_flythru.avi and millennium_sim_1024x768.avi? I will when I get them, but it's looking like an hour or more.
....how long does it take to crash the heap with 25 terabytes to play with?
/dev/null
#: java -Xmx25000000m Universe |
public class Universe() extends Thread {
public Universe() {
this.start();
}
public void run() {
while(!totalSystemicEntropy){
Universe nextUniverse = new Universe();
}
}
}
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
It's NOT RAM, it's DISK, as I said an hour ago to this same post.
The linked article clearly says the simulation was run against "25TB of **STORED OUTPUT**", e.g., DISK, not RAM.
Take a look at Tipler's website on the Omeha Point.. As bizarre as it may sound, there just might be something there.
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
I kinda feel like we really don't have all/most of the rules of physics down to accurately model the universe yet. I mean, sure the initial conditions we might have, but it just seems to me that, given how old the universe is, any off calculations will just compound and diverge are results from reality. Of course, I'm not sure how far or how detailed their modeling. I'm probably completely wrong.
A two galaxie simulation would produce a figure 8.Just a thought.They can never stop moving.
And when they shut down the universe there was a great disturbance in the Force.
At this point, we probably don't have nearly enough understanding about the nature of the universe to construct an accurate simulation. But if the technology behind this simulation is sound, then we're doomed.
It will be an instant testing ground for new physical theories, to see if the make the simulation more or less consistent with what we know about the real universe. Over time, our knowledge of physics will be precise to the point where this simulation will be so accurate that it will provide the ability to look at any point in the history of the universe, at any point in space, at any time, including the future. Now, first of all, what if it falls into the wrong hands? What if it's used for massive invasions of privacy, where you can look at what anyone has done at any time? Hell, what if the researchers creating it happen to be voyeuristic? Furthermore, what if we look into the future with it, and that causes the future to change? What the fuck happens then? This is seriously scaring me.
I'm not joking at all. It seems that's precisely their objective-- to refine the simulation until it's 100% accurate. I hope quantum theory (the part with the simultaneously alive and dead cat) is true, so that there's true randomness, which, orchestrated with Chaos theory, would make the universe totally unpredictable after a while. If not, and it's all deterministic and predictable, then, fuck. This thing (and anything like it) needs to be destroyed before it's too late.
On the plus side, they could solve all sorts of historical mysteries, like whether Jesus actually performed miracles (or even existed). That would make many spiritual quests a lot easier. But I'd prefer to keep my privacy, even if we can find out the answers to many great questions.
25 million megabytes does -not- equal 25 terrabytes. That is marketing droid logic.
I believe the purpose of the simulation is to try to gain a better understanding of the distribution and nature of dark matter/energy. To do this though surely you'd want to be mapping all the luminous matter and then work out what the dark stuff is doing from there? Why didn't they plot a smaller blob of the universe.
Why did this remind me of The Matrix?
In order to create an accurate simulation of the universe, the simulation would have to be as complex as the universe itself. That means it has to be able to store as much data as the universe is capable storing, ergo, the only possible simulation of the universe is the universe itself.
Garbage in...
Quality? So why'd they go with Xserve then instead of quality like EMC or Xiotech? Xserve is nothing but inexpensive SATA disks in a cheap RAID enclosure.
Or was it "A Sound of Thunder"...
But I'd prefer to keep my privacy, even if we can find out the answers to many great questions.
Trust me, no one is interested in whatever it is you're doing...
but...
can it make tea?
i totally built one of those on my apple ][+ like, 25 years ago. it's so been done to death.
It's only 2bn light years across but Professor Moriarty will never know the difference.
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
They are going to tell us how the universe ends with 25 million megabytes and the kmown laws of physics when it's not possible to just break one decently encrypted message with all the computer power in the world in less than expected remaining life of our solar system?
"Lack of technical competence coupled with the arrogance of power, as usual, leads to no good end."
And this is where they find: "Oops, the universe ends in 12 years. We wouldn't have ever noticed the singularity in the array of interrelated equations without this simulation, but additional analysis and observations suggest it is accurate. The fundies and the doomsday psychics were pretty accurate with their estimates."
And so many Slashdot readers still won't have been laid.
Sheesh!
Visit the best Liberal Blog: DU
Only one universe in the multiverse? Big Deal...
Unless my math is off, it's equivalent to 25,000 TB... and thus goes up to the next level 25 petabytes which is still signifigantly less than a yottabyte because of it's lack of "The Force."
"The "Millennium Simulation" employed more than 10 billion particles of matter to trace the evolution of the matter distribution in a cubic region of the Universe over 2 billion light-years on a side."
"...able to recreate evolutionary histories for the approximately 20 million galaxies..."
10B / 20M = 500 particles per galaxy... is it just me, or is that a bit thin?
That's just a few hundred disk drives. Any medium sized hosting facility has more disk than that. 25TB isn't that much any more. Here's 100TB in one rack at the Internet Archive. With servers. Draws 6 kilowatts. Put together by some people I know.
For $50, I would have told them "42", too.
--
make install -not war
When the program gets to the point that the computer was turned on, it would have to start taking the entropy it generates into account. In doing so, it alters it. And would have to also take the new alterations into account. It would get stuck in an infinite loop and never be able to progress into the future. Actually, it'd be stuck a little in the past (whenever it was turned on).
GE/S/P a- e++ y-- r-- s:++ d+ h! X+++ t++ C+ P+ L++ E W++ w M-- V? PS+ P+
Weather prediction has been done. Now stop screaming like a retard on AOL.
Does it offer the tantalising opportunity to fly through it and SHOOT things?
I remain skeptical. The known laws of physics in the universe seem to be changing on a daily basis, like stars orbiting planets now? If it takes this massive amount of computing power and time to calculate the state of a universe (mind-boggling in itself) wouldn't all that work be wasted by one little twist that God or whoever decides to throw into the equation to prove us humans are more clueless than we already are?
If memory serves (I'm not a NS subscriber, so I can't actually read the article now), the argument goes "If intelligent life evolves in a Universe, sooner or later it will have the technological capacity to simuate a Universe. Now, they will inevitably model their own Universe. Since they want to see events relevant to them, they will run time faster than their own Universe. Consequently, in a very short period of their time, there is another intelligent species in the simulated Universe, simulating their Universe, with time running faster. Very quickly, you have an infinite progression of simulation Universes."
I must admit, I didn't think simulating a Universe, thus providing the conditions for such a series of events, would be possible anywhere near my lifetime. But if the tech is developing already..
So essentially it's a supercomputer designed to calculate the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.
pphffft. Everyone knows the answer is 42.
I thought that they really hadn't even figured out how the universe worked.
Of course they haven't figured out how the universe works. Science isn't about that.
It's about creating mathematically precise models of reality that predict the same behaviour that the real world actually exhibits through testing and observation. The two things are entirely different. The real, hidden structure of reality may be utterly different from the models, but as long as she behaves in exactly the way that they predict, the proposed models earn their tick of acceptance just fine. That's how Science works.
The simulation work comes into this by helping both to generate and to check predictions.
It's not too surprising that the general public gets confused about this, since scientists don't go around prefixing every sentence with "It's just a model" disclaimers. But you can't really blame them for the lack of insightful science in most school curricula.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
10 billion particles, 20M galaxies ... so that's just 500 particles per galaxy.
... how sad. :-(
... ;-)
Since our little G2 sun isn't among our galaxy's top 500 stars on mass or luminosity, I guess it's not represented by even one particle in the simulation
Of course, that's where the "SOL PLEASE" cheat code comes in
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
...is our universe a simulation?
If it bites earth it's a worm. And a pretty big one too, if it gulps 43.5 kilograms of earth in a single bite.
Sorry for being a spelling fucktard, but I couldn't resist...
And the simulated People that evolve inside this simulated universe... How shall we communicate with them?
Maybe we can identify their primary (simulated) food production areas and tweak the simulation to create meaningful geometric patterns when they aren't looking. Circles, conjoined lines, etc.
640K should be enough for anybody.