How Cosmological Supercomputers Evolve the Universe All Over Again

the_newsbeagle writes "To study the mysterious phenomena of dark matter and dark energy, astronomers are turning to supercomputers that can simulate the entire evolution of the universe. One such simulation, the Bolshoi projection, recently did a complete run-through. It started with the state the universe was in around 13.7 billion years ago (not long after the Big Bang) and modeled the evolution of dark matter and energy up to the present day. The run used 14,000 CPUs on NASA's fastest supercomputer."

Comments

I call

[Anonymous Coward]

Bolshoit!

the simulation can never end

[catmistake]

It started with the state the universe was in around 13.7 billion years ago (not long after the Big Bang) and modeled the evolution of dark matter and energy up to the present day.

so... what happened when it reached the simulation of the simulation, and then eventually the simulation of the simulation of the simulation? I've long been told that it's turtles all the way down, but I'd like to see a citation.

Re:the simulation can never end

[olsmeister]

so... what happened

A stack overflow.

Re:the simulation can never end

[GodfatherofSoul]

42

Re:the simulation can never end

[Cryacin]

No, it's not turtles all the way down. Eventually you hit tortoise and a SVN repository.

Re:the simulation can never end

[ctrl-alt-canc]

Given the amount of floating point calculations involved in the project, the result will be 41.999999

Re:How long until...

[Nyder]

How long will it be until we can build a supercomputer that can span the Universe and if the Universe suffers a heat death it could just remake the whole Universe as it stored the state of everything within? Therefore humanity could survive even the end of the whole Universe in 100,000,000,000,000 years time. The short story the Last Question made quite an impression on me and surely with the current evolution in technology we could create a God computer eventually that would exist outside of anything we could comprehend. That would be mind-blowing.

I'm pretty sure Douglas Adams covered all that.

Or we could ...

[PPH]

... put this supercomputer to work generating all possible Slashdot logos.

Simulation Variant #85472721

[Tablizer]

I wonder who they say will win the election next month.

Mitt Obamney: He taxes the rich to pay for birth certificate forgeries and dog racks on top of all GM cars. He told the UK Olympians that their skeet shooters are bitter gun clingers.