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Simulated Universe

Posted by Zonk on from the not-the-matrix dept.

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."

6 of 332 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I thought by willpall · · Score: 3, Insightful
    That's probobly why they didn't name it, "Super Duper Accurate and Exact Precision Model of the Universe".

    Welcome to science, where no matter how far you come along, there's always a ways more to go. Today's models are flawed, but not nearly as much as yesterday's. And even if the Dark Matter mysteries or older-than-time star mysteries are resolved, I'm sure there will be other mysteries we have yet to discover. These simulations are a part of that process.

    --
    Libertarian: label used by embarrassed Republicans, longing to be open about their greed, drug use and porn collections.
  2. Re:Predicting the future by Jeremi · · Score: 2, Insightful
    And then I realized that the smallest simulation of the universe would probably be the size of the universe.


    Bah... the universe is mostly empty space. It would compress nicely.

    --


    I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
  3. One small detail by FunWithHeadlines · · Score: 2, Insightful
    "but it offers the tantalising opportunity to fast-forward in time to the slow death of the galaxies, billions of years from now"

    Assuming your assumptions and input are correct, of course.

  4. Re:Predicting the future by Mathonwy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think it actually (or perhaps also?) falls under the pigeonhole principal. In order to fit x seperate pidgeons, you need at least x holes. Or, in data storage terms, to be able to always represent x bytes worth of data, you need at least x bytes worth of data. (Compression sometimes seems to get around this, but with compression, it's almost always a tradeoff: It can store certain configurations of data (usually the most common) in less than x bytes, but other configurations (random noise, for example) almost always takes more. In order to ALWAYS be sure of being able to store x bytes, you need at least x bytes to store it in.)

  5. Re:Predicting the future by physicsphairy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "Bah... the universe is mostly empty space. It would compress nicely."
    In truth, no space is empty; and you can compress the data, but then you will not have a perfect simulation; your computer will take longer to process the data than the span of the events which are occuring. As far as predicting the future goes, it would be useless, because the real universe would complete its 'calculations' long before your more space-efficient machine did--you would in effect only be able to 'predict' the past.

    --
    When things get complex, multiply by the complex conjugate.
  6. How about giving me an accurate weather report? by Proudrooster · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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........