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Supercomputer Adds Credence to Standard Model
ScienceDaily is reporting that researchers at the University of Edinburgh and Southampton in cooperation with partners from Japan and the US have shed some light on the Standard Model of physics using a new computer model. "The project's enormously complex calculations relate to the behavior of tiny particles found in the nuclei of atoms, known as quarks. In order to carry out these calculations, the researchers first designed and built a supercomputer that was among the fastest in the world, capable of tens of trillions of calculations per second. The computations themselves have taken a further three years to complete. Their result shows that the Standard Model's claim to be the best theory invented holds firm. It raises the stakes for the riddle to be solved by experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, which will switch on later this year. Physicists' efforts to confront Standard Model predictions using the most powerful computers available with the most precise experiments offer no clues about what to expect."
Why does the number 42 come to mind?
What the hell's "credence?"
what it is the standard model needs added is a few pounds.
they look hungry.
Mever nind the typos.
Apparently the EFF is offering a $100,000 prize for discovering new prime numbers. As stated on the website. I'd be putting that processing to good use. If you've got a good system, the odds are not much worse than a lottery. And it's free. :)
I wish people would stop posting crappy science articles from ScienceDaily and related sites.
From this article, we learn that computer modeling confirmed something "about the behavior of quarks". That's it. There is nothing of substance in the article other than this and that the computation took three years.
42.
So they talk about how fast this new supercomputer is.
I presume that means they have absolutely no idea where it is?
...but a Clearwater Revival does.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
it only runs Windows, and 1/2 of the CPU is devoted to managing reboots.
-1 Annoying
Table-ized A.I.
Before we claim that the Standard Model is the end all of particle physics, lets see if we can find the Higgs Boson. Afterall, Fermilab has come very, very close, so the LHC should be able to seal the deal.
Like what they used the supercomputer to calculate? I already RTFA, and tried a Google search.
Supermodel Adds Credence to Standard Computer
Did Dell get Gisele Bündchen as a spokesmodel or something?
From the summary of the TFA (The Flimsy Article):
(..) however, it excludes the force of gravity, which is its shortcoming. Gravity - (arguably) the most important if not strongest force that makes our universe into what it is, given the distances over which it works, and it is NOT included in a theory that's supposed to explain same universe. That's no small shortcoming indeed!Maybe I'm naive in this respect, but IMHO the best theories (on any subject matter) are simply the ones that describe what we can observe in real life (aka empirical evidence) with the simplest/smallest set of rules. In the case of (the structure of) our universe, that should definitely include gravity.
If my own purchases are any indication, three years out the damned thing's now completely outmoded, and a pocket calculator will do the same thing ...
Rather than "they used a supercomputer to do physics"
http://www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/pubaf/pr/PR_display.asp?prID=08-x5
AccountKiller
will it blend?
Me: Hello, Dr. Weird, is your super computer running?
......
Dr. Weird: Yes.
Me: Well, then you'd better go catch it. Hahaha!
Dr. Weird:
Dr. Weird: RELEASE THE PHONE SPIDERS!!!
Me: Huh, release the...what the hell? ARGHH! GET THEM OFF ME! *click*
I'm just trying to think of how I would react, knowing that a computer was going to take 3 years to finish a task. Can you imagine staring at the status bar for that?
ScienceDaily (Feb. 29, 2008) -- Scientists have used a supercomputer to shed new light on one of the most important theories of physics, the Standard Model, which encapsulates understanding of all the material that makes up the universe. This 30-year-old theory explains all the known elementary particles and three of the four forces acting upon them - however, it excludes the force of gravity, which is its shortcoming.
Physicists have been trying to find the missing pieces in the jigsaw that would extend the Standard Model into a complete theory of all the forces of nature. However, the landmark findings by researchers at the Universities of Edinburgh and Southampton, and their partners in Japan and the US, confirm the Standard Model to even greater precision than before, deepening the puzzle.
The project's enormously complex calculations relate to the behaviour of tiny particles found in the nuclei of atoms, known as quarks. In order to carry out these calculations, the researchers first designed and built a supercomputer that was among the fastest in the world, capable of tens of trillions of calculations per second. The computations themselves have taken a further three years to complete.
Their result shows that the Standard Model's claim to be the best theory invented holds firm. It raises the stakes for the riddle to be solved by experiments at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, which will switch on later this year. Physicists' efforts to confront Standard Model predictions using the most powerful computers available with the most precise experiments offer no clues about what to expect.
Professor Chris Sachrajda of the University of Southampton's School of Physics and Astronomy said: 'Modern supercomputers and improved theoretical techniques are allowing us to explore the limits of the Standard Model to an unprecedented precision. The next stage will be to combine such computations with new experimental results expected from the Large Hadron Collider to unravel the next level of fundamental physics.'
Professor Richard Kenway of the University of Edinburgh's School of Physics added: 'Although the Standard Model has been a fantastic success, there were one or two dark corners where experimental tests had been inconclusive, because vital calculations were not accurate enough. We shone a light on one of these, but to our enormous frustration, nothing was lurking there.'
The research, published in Physical Review Letters, was supported by the Science and Technology Facilities Council.
Adapted from materials provided by University of Southampton .
I am Vroomfondle and that is not a demand, it is a solid fact.
We are philosophers (though we may not be). We are here as representatives of Amalgamated Union of Philosophers, Sages, Luminaries, and Other Professional Thinking Persons and we want this machine off and we want off now.
What's the use of our sitting up all night saying there may (or may not be) a God if this machine comes along next morning and gives you his telephone number?
We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!
You'll have a National Philosopher's Strike on your hands!
I only had to wait a few seconds for the answer: "Reply hazy, try again".
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
I would have to agree. Observations tend to provide "eureka" information that theory might miss or not become main stream for a while. Running models can extol supercomputers to a point - and peer reviews may be a big obstacle to the progress of science in many ways. I hope CERN offers us some groundbreaking material.
Gravity -- certainly the weakest force -- is completely irrelevant as far as the physics of elementary particles is concerned. In real life there is no way to observe any kind of gravitational interactions on the scales where the other forces are relevant. In particular, if there is physics just beyond the standard model it need not have any connection to gravity. It's true that gravity is relevant on extremely large scales, but for these scales we have perfectly good theories (GR; in fact Newtonian gravity is quite sufficient in almost all cases). You'd have to go to Planck scale before there'll be any guarantee of gravitational effects playing a role.
This is not to say that a quantum theory including gravity is not an important goal of theoretical physics, it's just to say that so far we have not found any real-life situations where such a theory would be needed, that is when corrections due to quantum gravity would play any role whatsoever. Hopefully the LHC will probe the physics beyond the standard model. The number of orders of magnitude between the energy scales we can actually observe and the quantum gravity energy scale make it extremely unlikely, however, that gravity will be relevant to experimental fundamental physics for many millenia.
often contain the most important answers
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I'm copying 2GB of photos from a share to my pen drive under Vista right now, so I don't have to imagine it.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Observations tend to provide "eureka" information that theory might miss or not become main stream for a while.
I completely disagree. It is only when theory and observation both agree that you have a "eureka" moment. For example we have an observation that there is lots of dark energy (not dark matter - that is different) in the universe. However, so far, there is no good theory as to what it is. I don't seem to remember anyone going "Eureka! We have discovered dark energy!". Rather everyone is sitting around scratching their heads and wondering what it is.
To get a Eureka moment you must have BOTH theory AND experiment in agreement. The SNO experiment is an excellent example. Experiment: not enough electron neutrinos coming from the sun; theory: neutrinos can change flavour from electron to tau or muon so the total flux of neutrinos will be correct; experiment: SNO measured the total neutrino flux and discovered that it agreed with solar model predictions while still seeing a reduced electron neutrino flux. Result: EUREKA! Neutrinos oscillate!
Conclusion: theory and experiment are both EQUALLY important to advancing science. One without the other may be interesting but not very useful.
From TFA: the Standard Model, which encapsulates understanding of all the material that makes up the universe.
The Standard Model actually encapsulates understanding of just under 5% of the material which makes up the Universe. ~20% of the material is dark matter which is not consistent with any SM particle and ~75% is dark energy which we don't even have a good theory for!
"There is nothing of substance in the article"
There is ABSOLUTLY NOTHING of substance in the article.
At Least you could have told us WHICH supercomputer/0
HECHoR is brand new, or Maxwell or some
beowolf cluster of bagpipes?
ScienceDaily is a terciary source. ( also its 'related' site are also devoid of interest' )
We should all just *ignore* it. Its not like there is any substance.
Much better is Scientific America, or MIT's TechReview.
Actually, this computation has nothing to do with the big bang. This a computation is about trying to see whether we can make sufficiently accurate (computer) calculations within QCD (our theory of quarks and elementary particles made from them) to understand particles at ordinary energy scales. This is actually quite hard (for reasons that would be hard to explain here). Making sure QCD correctly predicts the mass of the proton should come before worrying about the big bang (where physics beyond QCD will play a role anyway, and where we don't have any experimental data to compare our calculations with).
For a different perpsective, before worrying about incorporating gravity, you might want to note that this calculation only involved the 3 lightest quarks (up, down and strange), completely neglecting contributions from processes involving the other 3 quarks.
I always wonder about experiments like this: exactly how certain can we be that the calculations aren't simply producing the theorized result because the calculations assume the theory (directly or indirectly) to begin with?
It's a subtle point, but I think it's something that should always be double checked. How do we know that our mathematical equations apply in all simulated situations, and that they don't break down under different circumstances? What assumptions are we making about reality, and how sure are we that they remain true under the circumstances being calculated?
IANAP, so I really have no clue how to begin answering these questions, but I think they should always be asked.
Deep Thought already gave us the answer.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
when I first looked at the title I thought it had something to do with CCR.
My modest computer adds credence to FSM daily, and it doesn't boast of being super duper, although I think it is.
How do you expect to test a scientific theory unless you can actually calculate some predictions from it?
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
undergrads think they know everything, graduates know they know nothing and PHDs think everyone else knows nothing.