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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."

1 of 332 comments (clear)

  1. Predicting the future by XXIstCenturyBoy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.