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Simulating Galaxies With Supercomputers

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the delete-the-pool-ladder-quick dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Over in the UK Durham University is tasking its supercomputing cluster with nothing less than recreating how galaxies are born and evolve over the course of billions of years. Even with 800 AMD processor cores at its disposal the university is still hitting the limits of what is possible."

7 of 120 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Should have... by toastar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    800 cores.... that's like 134 CPU's, With 4 CPU's per node, it's only 34 Nodes. A rack holds 48u.

    So they have a problem that takes more then one rack of modern computers to handle?

  2. Gaaahhhh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Let's simulate a single cell, then an organism, then aging. Then we can start extending our lifespan. THEN we can start living, not just this handful of years between being a powerless child and a weak, aging adult. Then you can worry about galaxies.

    1. Re:Gaaahhhh by IndustrialComplex · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Let's simulate a single cell, then an organism, then aging. Then we can start extending our lifespan. THEN we can start living, not just this handful of years between being a powerless child and a weak, aging adult. Then you can worry about galaxies.

      What does an astrophysicist know about cellular biology? Probably about as much as a biologist knows about astrophysics.

      Compounding that, we wouldn't have made a fraction of the scientific progress to date if we focused on a single discipline until it was mastered before moving onto the next one. What good would supersonic airliners be if our civil and material engineering knowledge never learned how to make a tarmac which could support their weight?

      Ever wonder how much of our knowledge of high energy particles and fields came about because of cross-pollenation from physicists?

      --
      Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
  3. What is is new here? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    Haven't researchers been doing such simulations for a decade?

  4. Meaningless uninformed journalist bs by vlm · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Even with 800 AMD processor cores at its disposal the university is still hitting the limits of what is possible..

    Meaningless uninformed journalist bs filler puff. What is possible, is simulating every subatomic particle in the universe at planck time intervals for the total age of the universe, repeatedly for an infinite combination of different cosmological constants to see what you get. That will never be done, of course.

    --
    "Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
  5. computing astronomers doing this for decades by peter303 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Every year they can do more detail models. And they become clever in modeling. For example, aggregate gravity fields.

  6. Re:How long before ... by dominious · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Ref. to "The 13th floor". I just posted something similar a few posts before:)