How Cosmological Supercomputers Evolve the Universe All Over Again

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

How Cosmological Supercomputers Evolve the Universe All Over Again

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday October 2, 2012 @04:03PM from the just-don't-let-it-escape dept.

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."

144 comments

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

I call by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 16:05 · Score: 1, Funny

Bolshoit!
1. Re:I call by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 21:08 · Score: 0
  
  "Bolshoi" means Big in russian.
2. Re:I call by mcgrew · 2012-10-03 03:08 · Score: 1
  
  I'm thinking WOW, what a computer... modeling the 14 billion year history of every galaxy, stellar system, planet, moon, molecule, atom, subatomic particle in... how long did the simulation run?
  I'm sure they got some good theories (or at least hypotheses) out of this simulation, but come on... it isn't as impressive as TFS makes it seem.
  
  --
  Free Martian Whores!
How long until... by bejiitas_wrath · 2012-10-02 16:09 · Score: 2, Interesting

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.

--
liberare massarum ex ignorantia, clausa descendit molestie.
1. Re:How long until... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 16:12 · Score: 1
  
  You should probably also read The Last Answer, also freely available online. An equally thought-provoking short story.
2. Re:How long until... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 16:13 · Score: 0
  
  Would we have the power to change the code so that Justin Bieber was never born?
3. Re:How long until... by Nyder · 2012-10-02 16:16 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  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.
  
  --
  Be seeing you...
4. Re:How long until... by binarylarry · 2012-10-02 16:16 · Score: 1
  
  Someone better call the Dixie Flatline!
  
  --
  Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
5. Re:How long until... by binarylarry · 2012-10-02 16:19 · Score: 1
  
  According to this post, no.
  
  --
  Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
6. Re:How long until... by Yvanhoe · 2012-10-02 16:20 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  There is not enough energy in the universe to store all the informations of the universe in a computer.
  If you focus on some information (human minds for instance) of special interest to you, on the other hand...
  
  --
  The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
7. Re:How long until... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 16:30 · Score: 0
  
  More to the point, you might want to read Frank Tipler's "The Physics of Immortality".
8. Re:How long until... by thej1nx · 2012-10-02 16:33 · Score: 1
  
  That will in all likelihood be much, much longer than human kind's likely survival odds. So, the answer is never.
9. Re:How long until... by Tablizer · 2012-10-02 16:35 · Score: 1
  
  Maybe that's what we actually are, and "God" is really a lonely Linux admin (equivalent) playing with his human ant farm.
  
  --
  Table-ized A.I.
10. Re:How long until... by Tablizer · 2012-10-02 16:39 · Score: 2
  
  Could be worse: in one of the variants, Justin Bieber's mom had quintuplets.
  
  --
  Table-ized A.I.
11. Re:How long until... by stressclq · 2012-10-02 16:47 · Score: 1
  
  And we still don't know how it ends... Darn those Vogons and their hyperspatial express route!
12. Re:How long until... by Black+Parrot · 2012-10-02 17:13 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  There is not enough energy in the universe to store all the informations of the universe in a computer.
  I subscribe to the view that the universe is computing its own final state.
  Or more precisely, always computing its next state; apparently there isn't going to be a final one.
  
  --
  Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
13. Re:How long until... by DigiShaman · 2012-10-02 17:21 · Score: 1
  
  And this ultra-mega-super-computer will run on...what exactly? Once the real Universe cools down, so will this computer that requires a constant feed of energy.
  
  --
  Life is not for the lazy.
14. Re:How long until... by die+standing · 2012-10-02 17:45 · Score: 1
  
  so many people these days are throwing the concept around so easily eg. Google "itself," the iPhone "itself", Internet "itself," Earth "itself," the Law "itself," money "itself..."
  
  so it's really quite simple: it will just run on "itself" ;-)
15. Re:How long until... by 19thNervousBreakdown · 2012-10-02 17:52 · Score: 1
  
  The Planck constant just get bigger as you go.
  
  --
  <xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
16. Re:How long until... by YttriumOxide · 2012-10-02 18:20 · Score: 1
  
  You should probably also read The Last Answer, also freely available online. An equally thought-provoking short story.
  I believe the story you're referring to is "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov.
  
  --
  My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
  Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
17. Re:How long until... by erraticus · 2012-10-02 18:33 · Score: 1
  
  I've read it. I'm looking for sci-fi books like this. Do you guys remember anyone related to these matters?
18. Re:How long until... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 19:06 · Score: 1
  
  You jest, but that is actually one possible solution to the Fermi Paradox / Drake Equation... The longer we go without discovering other life in the universe, the more likely this is all a simulation.
19. Re:How long until... by sFurbo · 2012-10-02 19:18 · Score: 2
  
  If there were no dark energy, the temperature difference between a heat storage and an ever cooling universe would allow you to do infinitely many calculations, at an ever slowing rate. It seems that there is dark energy though, so the point where space-time recedes faster than c from you moves closer and closer. This is, essentially, an event horizon, so it will have Hawking radiation, meaning that the visible universe will not get arbitrarily cold, so only finitely many calculations can be done. It also becomes hard to do calculations when the electrons around a nucleus recedes from the nucleus faster than c. Dark energy is really a bummer when it comes to living forever.
20. Re:How long until... by maxwell+demon · 2012-10-02 19:28 · Score: 2
  
  You should probably also read The Last Answer, also freely available online. An equally thought-provoking short story.
  I believe the story you're referring to is "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Answer
  
  --
  The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
21. Re:How long until... by yahwotqa · 2012-10-02 19:47 · Score: 1
  
  Frederick Pohl's "The World at the End of Time" deals tangentially with heat death of the universe, and also has superbeings tossing stars at each other. Can't miss it. :)
22. Re:How long until... by tchi.keufte · 2012-10-02 20:15 · Score: 1
  
  In "The Last Question", the "God computer" you're talking about is composed of... humans. (Humanity IS the computer) What I mean is that, in real life, *maybe* (or maybe not) there's nothing to be built except running the Good (or God) software in people's brains.
23. Re:How long until... by wonkey_monkey · 2012-10-02 21:24 · Score: 2
  
  The GGP mentioned The Last Question, so I think the AC really was referring to The Last Answer.
  
  --
  systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
24. Re:How long until... by progician · 2012-10-02 21:24 · Score: 1
  
  The Last Question is better. This whole Omega Point crap is nothing but extrapolating the claim of theism of the Intelligent Design argument not that of the currently known science.
25. Re:How long until... by YttriumOxide · 2012-10-02 21:51 · Score: 1
  
  You're right... it's my fault for not reading the GGP fully. I only skimmed it, saw the premise of "The Last Question" and assumed that's what the GP meant. I am aware of the story "The Last Answer", but don't think it has much at all to do with the topic at hand, so assumed the AC suggesting it really meant The Last Question.
  
  --
  My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
  Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
26. Re:How long until... by dissy · 2012-10-02 21:54 · Score: 1
  
  Twice now it has been posted "Not only should you read The Last Question, but you should ALSO read The Last Answer"
  And twice now you have attempted to claim they intended to say "You should not only read The Last Question, but also read a totally different story called The Last Question"
  Why do you refuse to believe there are two stories by the same author with different names?
  The Last Question: http://filer.case.edu/dts8/thelastq.htm
  The Last Answer: http://www.thrivenotes.com/the-last-answer/
  Perhaps you should make yourself aware of both of them, before attempting to correct others who know what they mean to say :P
27. Re:How long until... by YttriumOxide · 2012-10-02 21:58 · Score: 1
  
  Perhaps you should make yourself aware of both of them, before attempting to correct others who know what they mean to say
  Perhaps you should read that I apologised twice for my mistakes already - it was due to reading comprehension failure (which I attribute to nicotine withdrawal - I'm quitting smoking) and not due to a lack of knowledge of the books. Regardless of the cause, it was my failure though, and I apologised for it.
  
  --
  My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
  Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
28. Re:How long until... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 23:19 · Score: 0
  
  Go read the Last Question by Isaac Asimov. It precedes Adams and was, as the original poster said, a mind blower the first time I read it as a teen-ager.
29. Re:How long until... by heathen_01 · 2012-10-03 00:03 · Score: 1
  
  Good luck with quitting!
30. Re:How long until... by Solozerk · 2012-10-03 00:43 · Score: 1
  
  A very good book on that subject: Permutation City, by Greg Egan.
31. Re:How long until... by RoccamOccam · 2012-10-03 01:27 · Score: 1
  
  Exactly. And it's becoming obvious that Dark Matter and Dark Energy are just a couple of hacks that were thrown in to make the simulation "look right".
32. Re:How long until... by rgbatduke · 2012-10-03 01:29 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Depends on how seriously you take information theory and the information content of the Universe. If, as seems rather reasonable, the information content of the (visible) Universe is irreducible/uncompressible, it would take at supercomputer with at least as many bits of storage as there are bits of information in the specification of the Universe's state. This requires a computer that is strictly larger than (in the sense of having at least as much "stuff" devoted to storage of all of those bits) than the Universe itself. Finally, since the supercomputer is part of the Universe (at least, if we built it), it also has to be self-referential and store its own state information. If it is to have any processing capability at all, it then is in a deadly game of catch-up, adding bits to describe every elementary particle in its processors and memory and losing the race even if it requires only one elementary particle to store the bit content of another (which will never be the case).
  
  In the end, it is provably, mathematically impossible to build a supercomputer that stores the complete state of the Universe, where the Universe is cleanly defined to be everything with objective existence. The same proof works to prove that there can be no omniscient God, since God suffers from precisely the same issues with information content and storage. A processing system cannot even precisely specify its own encoded state unless it is a truly bizarre fully compressible self-referential system the likes of which we cannot even begin to schematize, and there are lovely theorems on the rates of production of entropy in state switching on top of any actual physical mechanism for computation, all of which make this an interesting but ultimately absurd proposition.
  
  If you don't like information theory, then there are the limitations of physics itself, at least so far. We can only see back to (shortly after, the end of The Great Dark) the big bang, some ~14 bya. It is literally impossible for us to extract state information from outside of a sphere some 27.5 billion light years across. However, making reasonable assumptions of isotropy and continuity and the coupling of the "cosmic egg" that was the early post BB unified field state, cosmological measurements suggest that the Universe is no less than 200 times larger than this, that is, a ball some 500 billion light years across (where it is most unlikely that we are in the center of any actually compact Universe). Obviously, we cannot get any state information at all beyond indirect inference of mere existence from strictly less than 1 - (1/200)^3 of the actual Universe unless and until we have new transluminal physics. And from the first argument, even if you turned this 99.99999% of the actual Universe into a computer to fully describe only the 0.00001% visible sphere that we actually inhabit, you'd barely have enough material to create the bits needed to hold the information at current peak matter-per-bit levels (and then there is the problem of the free energy needed to drive any computation, the need for a cold reservoir into which to dump the entropy, but I digress). So it is safe to say that it is also physically impossible to build a supercomputer that can store/duplicate the information content of the entire Universe (and again, the same argument works against the existence of a God presuming only that this deity requires internal switching mechanisms on top of some sort of medium in order to store information and process it.
  
  The only exception to both is the specific case where the Universe and/or God are one and the same entity, and its "storage" of information is the irreducible representation of the information content of mass-energy in the mass-energy itself, and the irreducible computational mechanism is the laws of physics themselves.
  
  But of course you really do understand this, if you get outside of the willing suspension of disbelief required of science fiction (and yeah
  
  --
  Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
33. Re:How long until... by ClickOnThis · 2012-10-03 01:48 · Score: 1
  
  You should probably also read The Last Answer, also freely available online. An equally thought-provoking short story.
  I believe the story you're referring to is "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Answer
  No, I think GP really does mean The Last Question. That's the Asimov story with the Cosmic AC that [spoiler alert] re-creates the universe after the Heat Death.
  
  --
  If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
34. Re:How long until... by Zordak · 2012-10-03 03:00 · Score: 1
  
  Ten years or so ago I read a book called "Darwinia" by Robert Charles Wilson, though to say exactly what it has to do with this topic is kind of a spoiler.
  
  --
  
  Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
35. Re:How long until... by mcgrew · 2012-10-03 03:26 · Score: 1
  
  Niven, Asimov, and Hienlein have all written stories like this. One (Asimov iirc but it could have been Heinlein) wrote a short story about a time traveller who went to the heat death of the universe. Sorry, it's been years since I read it.
  Niven's A World Out of Time doesn't go to the end of the universe, but it's a really good read, involving relativistic speeds.
  
  --
  Free Martian Whores!
36. Re:How long until... by mcgrew · 2012-10-03 03:52 · Score: 2
  
  I'm quitting smoking
  Perhaps I can help.
  
  --
  Free Martian Whores!
37. Re:How long until... by SuperMooCow · 2012-10-03 04:00 · Score: 1
  
  And the Dark Knight was created to make more money.
38. Re:How long until... by maxwell+demon · 2012-10-03 04:00 · Score: 1
  
  You should probably also read The Last Answer, also freely available online. An equally thought-provoking short story.
  I believe the story you're referring to is "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov.
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Answer
  No, I think GP really does mean The Last Question. That's the Asimov story with the Cosmic AC that [spoiler alert] re-creates the universe after the Heat Death.
  Since he answered to a comment talking about "The Last Question" with the recommendation to also read "The Last Answer", it is pretty obvious that he did not mean "The Last Question".
  
  --
  The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
39. Re:How long until... by YttriumOxide · 2012-10-03 04:50 · Score: 2
  
  Thanks for that - I just read through it and it really did help.
  I planned this months in advance. My first attempt was before my daughter was born as I REALLY wanted her to have a non-smoking Dad. After one week though, my wife told me to buy cigarettes, since my mood was so foul, she just couldn't handle it.
  This time, we planned it so that my wife and daughter (now 18 months old) would be on holiday without me. I've gone cold turkey - no patches, no gum, nothing. The first three days were AGONY... physical pain in all my joints and muscles, sweating, unable to sleep. It got a bit better though and by the end of the first week, when my family came back from their little holiday, I was reasonably okay. I'm now approaching the end of week 2 (in 6 hours, it'll be 14 days since my last cigarette) and I'm still horribly moody, not thinking particularly clearly and not particularly pleasant; but the worst of it is over.
  Now, every time I feel I desperately NEED a cigarette (the triggers you mentioned are all there for me, definitely...), I just think of two things - the reason I'm doing it (my wife and daughter); and the agony I went through to quit, knowing I don't ever want to have to do that again.
  Tomorrow is my first day back at work and it's worth mentioning that where I live, you CAN smoke in the office at work - there'll be noone smoking in my office (you can't smoke when others in the same office room object) but I do visit other people's offices quite frequently who smoke like trains, so it'll be harder/impossible to avoid others smoking. So tomorrow's going to be a very hard day for me; but I'm totally sure I'll manage it - AND every day after it for the rest of my life.
  
  --
  My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
  Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
40. Re:How long until... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-03 06:19 · Score: 0
  
  "The same proof works to prove that there can be no omniscient God, since God suffers from precisely the same issues with information content and storage"
  incorrect... it proves that there can be no omniscient God that is part of the Universe... but then that isn't the conventional definition of God...
41. Re:How long until... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-03 06:50 · Score: 0
  
  You must be a blast at parties.
42. Re:How long until... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-03 06:54 · Score: 0
  
  Your argument is not airtight. Here are some of the flaws I see:
  1. As the Rietdijk-Putnam argument shows, the universe is truly 4D. Your arguments and all the information theory and holographic principle arguments I've seen seem to ignore this. They pretend the universe is a "3D now", making them dubious. If General Relativity is correct, then a "3D now" view of the universe can't possibly be valid in any non-infinitesimal volume. Why not focus on the real, 4D universe, and not a pretend one?
  2. "an infinite amount of digital storage to store one single real number valued quantity" - Yes, and if the universe contains an infinite amount of information, then it could be possible to represent the entire universe using a single particle. As a simple example, I can compress two infinite-digit real numbers X and Y into one infinite-digit real number Z by choosing digits alternately from X and Y. If you can show that the universe contains only a finite amount of information, then I'd find your arguments more plausible.
  3. The entire universe is not observable now, but it might be observable if it begins to contract in the distant future. Imagining backward in time toward the Big Bang, you see matter converge toward a boundary condition in a state of extraordinarily low entropy. This process seems to violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. How do you know what other miraculous boundary conditions might exist in our universe?
  4. "Obviously, we cannot get any state information at all... unless and until we have new transluminal physics" - What about this? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive
43. Re:How long until... by turp182 · 2012-10-03 12:27 · Score: 1
  
  I like the way you think.
  
  --
  BlameBillCosby.com
44. Re:How long until... by Yvanhoe · 2012-10-03 15:03 · Score: 1
  
  Well then you can argue that any system is a simulation of itself, don't you?
  
  --
  The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
45. Re:How long until... by mcgrew · 2012-10-04 01:31 · Score: 1
  
  Good luck!
  
  --
  Free Martian Whores!
What about next month? by Todd+Palin · 2012-10-02 16:10 · Score: 0

I wonder who they say will win the election next month.
the simulation can never end by catmistake · 2012-10-02 16:12 · Score: 4, Funny

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.

--
The Admin and the Engineer
1. Re:the simulation can never end by olsmeister · 2012-10-02 16:21 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  so... what happened
  A stack overflow.
2. Re:the simulation can never end by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 16:22 · Score: 0
  
  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.
  Unfortunately it's in turtle-ease.
3. Re:the simulation can never end by GodfatherofSoul · 2012-10-02 16:26 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  42
  
  --
  I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
4. Re:the simulation can never end by Cryacin · 2012-10-02 16:32 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  No, it's not turtles all the way down. Eventually you hit tortoise and a SVN repository.
  
  --
  Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
5. Re:the simulation can never end by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 17:52 · Score: 0
  
  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.
  It might be turtles all the way down, but I'm pretty sure Xzibit is going to be in there somewhere. I mean, we do like to simulate.
6. Re:the simulation can never end by jmerlin · 2012-10-02 17:57 · Score: 1
  
  Well if there's a simulation within a simulation ad infinitum, the 'simulation' starts off in a real universe (sort of like how there's a smallest element in the set of natural numbers). But then the probability that we're in the real universe is therefore infinitesimally small.
7. Re:the simulation can never end by brisk0 · 2012-10-02 18:36 · Score: 2
  
  Not infinitesimally, each universe would probably have to be significantly simpler than the one it's already in, until the point that a universal simulation is too complex for the universe. Of course any one universe could spawn [very large number] of simulated worlds in a tree structure.
  So if we assume mediocrity (and assume I'm not just spouting bull), we exist in one of the simpler universes... the original must have been nuts.
8. Re:the simulation can never end by ctrl-alt-canc · 2012-10-02 18:49 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  Given the amount of floating point calculations involved in the project, the result will be 41.999999
9. Re:the simulation can never end by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 20:40 · Score: 0
  
  GIGO happened, it still invented merkins
10. Re:the simulation can never end by Mr0bvious · 2012-10-03 00:15 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  Nick Bostrom has a paper on this, the intro:
  This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed
  
  --
  Never happened. True story.
11. Re:the simulation can never end by Theovon · 2012-10-03 02:05 · Score: 1
  
  I know you guys are joking (and the jokes are actually funny this time), but not everyone necessarily realizes that the fidelity of the simulation is much too granular for this to be an issue. Simulation atoms (i.e. indivisible units, software objects) will be on the order of galaxies, not planets, and certainly not atoms.
12. Re:the simulation can never end by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-03 03:38 · Score: 0
  
  dude let it go already. it wasn't funny 10 years ago because faggots like you kept repeating it
13. Re:the simulation can never end by SuperMooCow · 2012-10-03 04:01 · Score: 1
  
  In layman's terms: turtles overflow.
14. Re:the simulation can never end by SuperMooCow · 2012-10-03 04:09 · Score: 1
  
  The radio version was broadcast in 1978, which is way more than 10 years ago. But if someone listened to the radio version for the first time last week, it's new to them.
15. Re:the simulation can never end by GodfatherofSoul · 2012-10-03 04:22 · Score: 1
  
  Hate to reply to an AC, but "faggot"? What, did you just get banned from CoD for hacking and decide to come troll Slashdot for a while?
  
  --
  I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
16. Re:the simulation can never end by Dracophile · 2012-10-03 09:27 · Score: 1
  
  ... which is provably the same as 42.
  
  --
  Athy, athier, athiest.
False advertising by Cyphase · 2012-10-02 16:12 · Score: 1

Did anyone else think this was going to be about some sort of Universe-scale natural phenomenon being modeled as a supercomputer?

--
by Cyphase ( 907627 )
Let's qualify that sentence just a bit... by Empiric · 2012-10-02 16:14 · Score: 3, Informative

...astronomers are turning to supercomputers that can simulate the entire evolution of the universe.

I'm thinking the intent here is to mean this qualified "up to a certain point in time", as I'm pretty sure that to say this as a general, even theoretical, possibility is a Godelian-type logical impossibility. Since the supercomputers would be part of the universe you are simulating, you have to simulate the simulation of the supercomputer, which requires simulating the simulation of the computer simulating the computer... ad infinitum.

But then again, I may be wrong. Best simulate my thought processes to be sure.

--
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
1. Re:Let's qualify that sentence just a bit... by bejiitas_wrath · 2012-10-02 16:35 · Score: 1
  
  But what if you build the computer outside the Universe so it is not part of the Universe. The AC was in hyperspace... BTW, is the One in the Last Answer story the cosmic AC?
  
  --
  liberare massarum ex ignorantia, clausa descendit molestie.
2. Re:Let's qualify that sentence just a bit... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 16:42 · Score: 0
  
  Since the supercomputers would be part of the universe you are simulating, you have to simulate the simulation of the supercomputer, which requires simulating the simulation of the computer simulating the computer... ad infinitum.
  You're naively assuming the simulation is perfect. It isn't and could never be, even if you used all the matter in the Universe to build the machine. It'd be great if everything could be perfect, but even when possible often the costs are too high so a good enough solution is... well, good enough.
3. Re:Let's qualify that sentence just a bit... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 16:56 · Score: 0
  
  I always laugh at this genius bit of journalism
  "...simulate the entire evolution of the universe..." :D
  Just to add some clarity amd intrigue, the simulation concerns large-scale structure of the Universe: The models in principle include dark matter, dark energy and standard matter (i.e. stars and such stuff...), but the point is that they use a simplified description which is valid only over VAST distances. It turns out that, e.g. the 'standard matter' can be modeled as a fluid --- basically all the stars, dust, galaxies, etc., when 'smeared' in space, behave as a fluid. Imagine a sand storm, where all sand particles are stars.
  So, there are equations describing how fluids flow, including the gravitational and electromagnetic forces through them (which are the only ones relevant at long distances). As the 'Universe evolves' in the model, the fluid of dark matter clumps together into a network of fibres, and since it gravitationally attracts normal matter, it clumps too, forming filaments of higher density. Indeed, astronomers observe galaxies clumping into filament-like structures.
  To add inslut to injury, such hydridynamic simulations are actually done by using "effective particles", meaning that the fluid itself is not modeled as a continuous medium but is modeled by a bunch of 'particles' which interact in specific ways. But these particles represent bits of fluid contining billions of solar masses.
  Resulting pictures and videos (follow also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Run ) make me calm and blisful.
4. Re:Let's qualify that sentence just a bit... by Joe_Dragon · 2012-10-02 16:59 · Score: 1
  
  what about it becoming a feed back loop where the simulation of the computer simulating ends ends powering the simulation of the computer simulating
5. Re:Let's qualify that sentence just a bit... by JWW · 2012-10-02 17:10 · Score: 2
  
  What part of "turtles all the way down" don't you understand?
6. Re:Let's qualify that sentence just a bit... by Black+Parrot · 2012-10-02 17:18 · Score: 2
  
  ...astronomers are turning to supercomputers that can simulate the entire evolution of the universe.
  I'm thinking the intent here is to mean this qualified "up to a certain point in time", as I'm pretty sure that to say this as a general, even theoretical, possibility is a Godelian-type logical impossibility. Since the supercomputers would be part of the universe you are simulating, you have to simulate the simulation of the supercomputer, which requires simulating the simulation of the computer simulating the computer... ad infinitum.
  Almost without exception, simulations are simpler than the thing being simulated. You use simulations when the real thing would be impossible, or too dangerous or expensive.
  
  --
  Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
7. Re:Let's qualify that sentence just a bit... by Empiric · 2012-10-02 17:27 · Score: 1
  
  Good question. What part of the relative timestamps of that post and mine don't you understand?
  
  --
  ~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
8. Re:Let's qualify that sentence just a bit... by Empiric · 2012-10-02 17:37 · Score: 1
  
  Indeed. And without the qualifier "entire", I wouldn't have commented. That suggests complete algorithmic, rather than heuristic, simulation.
  
  --
  ~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
9. Re:Let's qualify that sentence just a bit... by Yetihehe · 2012-10-02 18:28 · Score: 1
  
  This was answered in Permutation_City by Greg Egan. You just start new simulation.
  
  --
  Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
10. Re:Let's qualify that sentence just a bit... by YttriumOxide · 2012-10-02 18:29 · Score: 1
  
  But what if you build the computer outside the Universe so it is not part of the Universe. The AC was in hyperspace... BTW, is the One in the Last Answer story the cosmic AC?
  The story is called "The Last Question ", not "The Last Answer"... seems to be a common mistake; but completely defeats the point of the story. The point is that the question remains the same throughout the ages and is always answered the same way; until the very end when there is finally a way to answer to the last question - however the answer is never given since only through demonstration of the answer can there be someone to give the answer to.
  As for the name of the computer, it changes for each "time period"... "AC" is the only stable part. The first one is "Multivac", the very last one is just "AC". "Cosmic AC" is, IIRC, the second last one.
  
  --
  My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
  Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
11. Re:Let's qualify that sentence just a bit... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 19:24 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  You fail to realize something. If the reality we are experiencing is in fact a simulation, then it doesn't matter if one plank-step of the simulation takes an hour or a Universe worth of time to compute -- To us within the simulation, time remains locally constant. Likewise, The super computers can simulate the entire evolution of the universe by imposing acceptable error rates (epsilon).
  A very low resolution simulation would simply count down from 1.0 (max Universal energy) to 0.0 (heat death) over one universe worth of time steps, the fastest of such simulation is a single constant approximation: .42
  A higher resolution simulation could produce a more detailed simulation using much more than a single time step. Interestingly, the quantum error rate can be predicted from within the simulation via observation. Heisenberg has calculated the epsilon of our Universe... Plank calculated the physics step size.
  In short: One can indeed calculate an entire Universe within another if one allows a high enough "acceptable" error rate and low enough resolution. Quantum Uncertainty may be proof such corner cutting has already happened at a higher dimension.
12. Re:Let's qualify that sentence just a bit... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 19:52 · Score: 1
  
  Wow. In case you missed it, an AC just provided both the Ultimate Answer to Life the Universe and Everything, AND demonstrated the Ultimate Question too. Protip, The U.Q. seems to be something like: "What is 'normal', anyway?" -- Deep Thought simply used a scale of 100 to 0 instead of 1.0 to 0.0
  There may be hope for humanity yet!
13. Re:Let's qualify that sentence just a bit... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 20:04 · Score: 1
  
  Good question. What part of quantum tachyon dynamics do I need to understand to follow the jokes on this thread?
14. Re:Let's qualify that sentence just a bit... by Maritz · 2012-10-02 20:07 · Score: 1
  
  The story is called "The Last Question ", not "The Last Answer"... seems to be a common mistake; but completely defeats the point of the story.
  I hadn't heard of it until reading these comments but there is a 'last answer' by Asimov as well. The common mistake seems to be people correcting those who mention it..!
  
  --
  I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
15. Re:Let's qualify that sentence just a bit... by Sique · 2012-10-02 20:09 · Score: 1
  
  There are two stories, one is The Last Answer and the other The Last Question. Both are by Isaac Asimov.
  
  --
  .sig: Sique *sigh*
16. Re:Let's qualify that sentence just a bit... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 20:38 · Score: 0
  
  When they say "entire", they mean the entire universe as opposed to some subset of it (like a single galaxy). In the same way, I could write a simulation of my home city's entire traffic network rather than some subset of it (like a single intersection). It doesn't mean that I'm calculating the vibration of every atom in every fleck of paint on every vehicle on the roads.
17. Re:Let's qualify that sentence just a bit... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 21:06 · Score: 0
  
  Simulation inherently involves abstracting away from the real world, so there is no problem with this sentence.
18. Re:Let's qualify that sentence just a bit... by YttriumOxide · 2012-10-02 21:54 · Score: 1
  
  I hadn't heard of it until reading these comments but there is a 'last answer' by Asimov as well. The common mistake seems to be people correcting those who mention it..!
  I am aware of the story "The Last Answer", but didn't think it has much at all to do with the topic at hand, and had just replied to someone else about "The Last Question" so mistakenly assumed the reference here should also be to it. Totally my fault on lack of comprehension, since re-reading the GP post; he clearly did mean "The Last Answer" and was wondering about the relationship between the stories...
  
  --
  My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
  Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
19. Re:Let's qualify that sentence just a bit... by Empiric · 2012-10-03 02:22 · Score: 1
  
  It doesn't mean that I'm calculating the vibration of every atom in every fleck of paint on every vehicle on the roads.
  
  Yes, it does. That's what "entire" means.
  
  I can code up a simulation of a "subset of the universe" in an hour, and run it on my desk PC. It would not be notable, and would not make it to a Slashdot headline. What we have in reality is something between the two cases, which I have suggested is overstated, for at minimum the reason given.
  
  --
  ~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
20. Re:Let's qualify that sentence just a bit... by Maritz · 2012-10-03 05:19 · Score: 1
  
  Indeed ;) Shall have to check out the last answer, as the last question really is one of the coolest short stories I've read.
  
  --
  I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
The most depressing thing by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 16:18 · Score: -1

The most depressing thing about this simulation was that after simulating 13.7 billion years of galactic evolution using 14000 high-end CPUs for months on end, the end result was that in the simulated universe, just as in our own, Justin Bieber made it big.
GIGO by slashmydots · 2012-10-02 16:21 · Score: -1, Flamebait

As soon as they feed data in, they realize they were wrong about some part of physics or particles or total universe mass and start over. There are hundreds of pure assumptions and estimations put in to the point where the accuracy is terrible. Then when the result doesn't match, they sort of BS it until it does match but the numbers barely make sense. Not exactly the best use of supercomputing. They'd probably get more money than that science grant money baiting if they ran a bitcoin miner on it instead, lol.
1. Re:GIGO by steppedleader · 2012-10-02 17:08 · Score: 2
  
  It appears that the model reproduces some large scale statistical properties of the universe with reasonable accuracy. That seems reasonable. It's a far cry from being able to say "the model reproduced the Milky Way", but the statistical information by itself could very well be useful as a tool for developing new hypotheses. Of course, if the model is all wrong those hypotheses will be useless, but let's see what they can do with the data before we make that conclusion.
2. Re:GIGO by TapeCutter · 2012-10-02 17:13 · Score: 1
  
  The only garbage here is your post, I suspect what you are doing is projecting your own personality flaws onto others.
  
  --
  And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
3. Re:GIGO by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 17:27 · Score: 0
  
  So, as you seem to be saying, they take a model and use it to make predictions about the observable universe, then compared those predictions to actual observations, tossing out the model if it doesn't match. And this is wrong?
  You could be trying to make a subtler point about over-fitting, where they have freedom to choose so many parameters they can find whole classes of models that would work. But do you actually know how many input parameters they have control over, and how many independent data points they are comparing this to? Or are you just assuming their actions happen to match your preconceived notions, resulting in you having horrible accuracy due to assumptions?
4. Re:GIGO by Maritz · 2012-10-02 20:12 · Score: 1
  
  There are hundreds of pure assumptions and estimations put in to the point where the accuracy is terrible.
  You sound like you know what you're talking about; able to point us in the direction of a few dozen of those hundreds of assumptions?
  
  --
  I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Or we could just ... by PPH · 2012-10-02 16:26 · Score: 1

... run Windows 9 with it.

--
Have gnu, will travel.
Or we could ... by PPH · 2012-10-02 16:28 · Score: 3, Funny

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

--
Have gnu, will travel.
1. Re:Or we could ... by ArsenneLupin · 2012-10-03 00:25 · Score: 1
  
  I'm looking forward October 29th logo...
Did it find out who killed JFK? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 16:32 · Score: 0

Maybe my expectations are too high.
1. Re:Did it find out who killed JFK? by Tablizer · 2012-10-02 16:50 · Score: 2
  
  We all did, in at least one variant. My avatar slipped on Marilyn Monroe's used tampon in a grassy knoll, setting off a guard's gun. Sorry 'bout that.
  
  --
  Table-ized A.I.
2. Re:Did it find out who killed JFK? by Black+Parrot · 2012-10-02 17:23 · Score: 1, Insightful
  
  We all did
  I shouted out Who killed the Kennedys?, when after all... It was you and me.
  
  --
  Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
3. Re:Did it find out who killed JFK? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 17:45 · Score: 0
  
  You bastards!
4. Re:Did it find out who killed JFK? by wbr1 · 2012-10-02 23:10 · Score: 1
  
  Pleased to meet you! Won't you guess my name?
  
  --
  Silence is a state of mime.
5. Re:Did it find out who killed JFK? by dkleinsc · 2012-10-02 23:42 · Score: 1
  
  According to one source, time-travelling JFK.
  
  --
  I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
Oy Vey by Tablizer · 2012-10-02 16:33 · Score: 0

If you think slashdotters are tired of First Posts....

--
Table-ized A.I.
Simulation Variant #85472721 by Tablizer · 2012-10-02 16:46 · Score: 3, Funny

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.

--
Table-ized A.I.
1. Re:Simulation Variant #85472721 by Black+Parrot · 2012-10-02 17:16 · Score: 2
  
  Mitt O['B]amney
  Not a Kenyan, not a Mormon, but an Irishman!
  
  --
  Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
2. Re:Simulation Variant #85472721 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 17:39 · Score: 0
  
  Not a Kenyan, not a Mormon...
  Shouldn't that be "Not a Kenyan, not a Mexican..." for consistency?
3. Re:Simulation Variant #85472721 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 18:32 · Score: 0
  
  not when the axis of measure is bigotry.
4. Re:Simulation Variant #85472721 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 19:32 · Score: 0
  
  not when the axis of measure is bigotry.
  You can't be bigoted against Irishmen, they aren't human.
5. Re:Simulation Variant #85472721 by mcgrew · 2012-10-03 08:48 · Score: 1
  
  Actually it isn't far from the truth. Obama does have Irish anscestry on his mother's side, and I would be surprised if Romney wasn't part Irish.
  
  --
  Free Martian Whores!
Any Cosmologists Here? by steppedleader · 2012-10-02 16:46 · Score: 2

First off, "entire evolution of the universe" should obviously be qualified with "on cosmological scales", unless they've built the matrix. That said, how big is the domain? Is it just set to match the observable universe? 2048 grid points across the entire universe (or just the observable universe) seems rather... low-res. The TFA mentions an adaptive grid, but fails to mention what factor that can increase the local resolution by.

Also, how exactly do we model dark matter when we don't really know WTF it is beyond the fact that it has gravitational mass? Does it work because gravitational effects are the only thing that really matters on cosmological scales?

I must say I like the use of periodic boundary conditions, though, simply because it makes their simulated universe conform to the Modest Mouse lyric "The universe is shaped exactly like the earth, if you go straight long enough you end up where you were".
1. Re:Any Cosmologists Here? by mendelrat · 2012-10-02 18:23 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  I'm not a cosmologist, but I am an astronomer. Most of the questions you ask are in the papers associated with Bolshoi, but science writers just leave them out because the numbers are so huge and hard to relate with -- I'm going to use megaparsecs for distances; 1 megaparsec = 1 million parsecs = 3.26 million light years = 200 billion astronomical units. 1 astronomical unit is ~93 million miles, the distance from the Earth to the Sun.
  
  First off, "entire evolution of the universe" should obviously be qualified with "on cosmological scales", unless they've built the matrix. That said, how big is the domain? Is it just set to match the observable universe? 2048 grid points across the entire universe (or just the observable universe) seems rather... low-res. The TFA mentions an adaptive grid, but fails to mention what factor that can increase the local resolution by.
  As you point out, the 'entire evolution ...' phrase is a bad way of saying that the simulated volume and mass is large enough to be statistically representative of the large scale structure and evolution of the entire universe. It's 2048^3 particles total, which is a heck of a lot. 8,589,934,592 particles total, each pushing and pulling on each other simultaneously. It's an enormous computational problem. The particles are put into a box ~250 megaparsecs on a side; the Milky Way is ~0.03 megaparsecs in diameter, and it's ~0.8 megaparsecs from here to the Andromeda galaxy, our nearest large galaxy. 250 megaparsecs is a huge slice and more than enough to ensure that local variations (galaxies) won't dominate the statistics. The ART code starts with a grid covering 256^3 points, but can subdivide to higher resolutions if some threshold is passed up to 10 times if I remember correctly, giving a limit of around 0.001 megaparsecs. My memory is hazy, and the distances are scaled according to the hubble constant at any given point, but they're in the ballpark I think.
  
  Also, how exactly do we model dark matter when we don't really know WTF it is beyond the fact that it has gravitational mass? Does it work because gravitational effects are the only thing that really matters on cosmological scales?
  Essentially, yes; gravity absolutely dominates at these scales compared to all other forces considered. The role of stellar and galactic feedback into their environment when forming (and as they evolve) changes lots of important things, but simulations like Bolshoi seek to simulate the largest scale structures in the universe. Smaller subsections of the simulation can be picked out to run detailed N-body simulations of Milky Way type galaxies, or to statically match the dark matter clumps (which will form galaxies) to huge databases like the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Both of those are pretty active things-to-do in cosmology now.
2. Re:Any Cosmologists Here? by steppedleader · 2012-10-02 20:04 · Score: 1
  
  Ah, thank you. I'm a numerical modeler myself, but I'm studying meteorology and thus generally focus on things that happen a bit more nearby and in a fluid medium. Good to know my physics BS allows me to at least ask somewhat intelligent questions about this sort of stuff, though!
Reminds me of that old joke by khelms · 2012-10-02 16:50 · Score: 2

Scientists build the ultimate computer. The first thing they ask it is, "is there a god?". The computer answers "there is now!"
A complete run-through? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 16:59 · Score: 0

A complete run-through of the universe up to present day? It's not a complete run-through, then, is it? I would imagine it should include a heat death or a big freeze to be considered anywhere near complete.
1. Re:A complete run-through? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 17:31 · Score: 0
  
  Do you not understand what a grammatical qualifier is and how it can modify meaning to be specific to a narrower context?
2. Re:A complete run-through? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 18:45 · Score: 0
  
  Yes, but this is /. and I like to nitpick. The summary talks about simulating the entire evolution of the universe. It's not like the universe won't evolve beyond present day.
  Seeing (at least) the next few steps might be interesting and also relevant in evaluating the strength of the model. This is beyond my nitpick, though.
This is really creepy by GodfatherofSoul · 2012-10-02 17:18 · Score: 1

Or maybe I just watch to many sci-fi movies. Feels like one of those "knowledge man was not yet ready to possess" storylines in the works.

--
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
1. Re:This is really creepy by noobermin · 2012-10-02 17:38 · Score: 1
  
  General Relativity has been around for almost a century and it's been understood pretty well since the 60's.
Epistemological Weakness by Required+Snark · 2012-10-02 17:56 · Score: 4, Interesting

This is clearly good work, but I believe that the article glosses over real problems with these kinds of simulations. The short version of the problem is that the agreement between the model and the observations doesn't provide a huge degree of confidence in the model being tested. It appears that both the model and the starting setup are per-disposed to produce results that match observations.
There has been no perturbation testing of the model. It does not seem that they did any runs that were intended to produce a result that did not match observations. They have no idea what range of input or modeling change produce a result that matches observations.
The greatest utility of these simulations is when they don't match observations. This opens the possibility that the current ideas are incorrect, and that new ideas are needed.
I also wonder about scaling issues. The three simulations at different scales are unconnected. There is no way to see how events at one scale effect events at other scales.
The author also said one specific thing that bothered me:

Astrophysicists can model the growth of density fluctuations at these early times easily enough using simple linear equations to approximate the relevant gravitational effects.

I am not a physicist or cosmologist, but that seems to be a huge assumption. We have no idea what dark energy or dark matter are, but they can be modeled by "simple linear equations."
I know that the shear cost and complexity of these computational experiments means that they are hard to accomplish. Even so, I will be less skeptical about their value when they are done in ways that test how the simulations fail, as well as how they verify current ideas.

--
Why is Snark Required?
1. Re:Epistemological Weakness by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 19:26 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Yes, Bolshoi's initial conditions were in some sense designed to match observations. Specifically, the five main parameters which describe cosmology (including the abundance of dark energy and dark matter) were derived from observations of the cosmic microwave background, supernovae, and galaxy clustering. These five numbers were used to generate the initial conditions for Bolshoi; a supercomputer spent the time to figure out how the universe should evolve from several million years after the Big Bang to the present day. Thus, Bolshoi serves as a giant consistency check of the model: i.e., it tests whether the five parameters are enough to explain everything we observe about the evolution of the universe, as well as whether observers calculated them correctly.
  However, the fact that Bolshoi matches observations now is no guarantee that a future observation won't come along and break things. The previous large simulation (the Millennium Simulation), which was run in 2005, was also designed to match all observations up to that point. However, since then, we've made observations which contradicted results from that previous simulation, which have indeed taught us new things.
  Finally, to address the specific point that you raise: we don't know what dark matter and dark energy are, but to our knowledge, gravity doesn't care about the type of matter/energy involved. This assumption could be wrong, of course. So far, however, making that assumption has led to predictions which seem to match observations. (So it would definitely be interesting if someone made an observation that proved otherwise!) The "linear equations" the author is referring to are simply Taylor expansions of the gravitational potential. Since the density fluctuations in the early universe are tiny (variations of +/- 0.001% even 300,000 years after the Big Bang), using a linear approximation doesn't introduce significant errors. However, once the density fluctuations grow to +/- 10% or so, then the linear approximation is no longer as useful; that's when the supercomputer takes over to do more accurate computations of gravity.
2. Re:Epistemological Weakness by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 20:43 · Score: 1
  
  We have no idea what dark energy or dark matter are, but they can be modeled by "simple linear equations."
  That bit's fine. Dark matter and dark energy are fudge factors in the equations that make them generate answers corresponding to what we see. (This isn't a bad thing: an electron is also a fudge factor that makes lots of different equations produce results that correspond to experimental results.) At the moment, simple linear terms for dark matter and energy are enough to produce results consistent with observations. If they weren't, that would tell us that our simple concepts of dark matter and energy are wrong. Until then, though, by Occam's razor, we'll stick with the simple linear representation.
  (I'm an astrophysicist, but not a cosmologist.)
3. Re:Epistemological Weakness by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 22:47 · Score: 0
  
  We'll know the worth of this model in the future, when we have new observations.
  If the new observations fit the model, that's good.
  If they don't, that's great. That's the place to search for new stuff.
4. Re:Epistemological Weakness by Required+Snark · 2012-10-03 02:15 · Score: 1
  
  Thank you very much for the informative response. I did not intend to dismiss the simulation results, I just wanted to get a better understanding of what they did or did not imply. Viewing the results as a consistency check provides a useful context.
  I know that the experimenters would like to be able to explore the limits of the current modeling techniques. These simulations are so time consuming that running examples that are expected to fail (not match known observational data) is hard to justify. Hopefully decreasing computing costs and software improvements will allow cosmologists the latitude to do these kinds of tests as well.
  Slashdot tends to produce more heat (and dumb jokes) then light, so it is really nice to have an interaction that is so informative. Thanks again for providing such a thoughtful answer.
  
  --
  Why is Snark Required?
Models, models, models.... by macraig · 2012-10-02 18:03 · Score: 1

And if the beginning parameters of the model were off from actual history by even the tiniest fraction, the extrapolated results won't be worth much. We pretend otherwise, but we really still don't know the current state and composition of the universe, much less how it started... assuming it started. There's a reason that they're called theories.
1. Re:Models, models, models.... by brisk0 · 2012-10-02 19:03 · Score: 1
  
  There's a reason that they're called theories.
  Because they have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment?
  
  As far as I know your point is still valid, I'm just nitpicking.
Re:Reminds me of that old joke .. the answer is 42 by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 18:50 · Score: -1

Actually, it's no joke, just a blasphemy. The simulation was based upon faulty input -- GIGO rules.

First, there was no Big Bang. The universes are eternal. These universes are connected by white holes (Garbage In) and black holes (Garbage Out). Black holes destabilize matter into energy which is drawn into an alternate parallel universe. In that alternate universe white holes spew energy out into a cacophony of frequencies that astronomers now identify as dark matter/dark energy. This dark matter/dark energy is the basic building block of all perceived matter in each universe before it has coalesced into self-organized symphonies of frequencies. Matter is merely the interference pattern of energy that has self-organized into stable symphonies of frequencies that exhibit specific perceived physical properties. It is possible to alter these interference patterns, which will coincidentally alter matter, gravity, and time.

These alterations allow the transmutation of matter, known by ancient alchemists but lost to humanity and rediscovered numerous times with each rise and fall of advanced civilizations. These alterations also allow for access to free energy, plus interstellar, inter-dimensional, and time travel. These physical properties can and do vary in each each universe, along with the laws of physics, which are symphony dependent. From the smallest subatomic particle to the largest galaxy in each universe, all are the equivalent of a Mandelbrot Set of energy that vibrates in resonant symphonies of frequencies. Only two things are eternal, energy and time, although time has a different rate of speed in each universe. Energy is immutable, but matter is not, nor is gravity.

Einstein was knowingly wrong, and left out many components in his famous "E = mc^2" formula. So too was Lorenz, with his modifications of that formula. Components of the true formula have not been completely revealed, although Nikoli Tesla came the closest thus far in the modern age of man. The knowledge imparted to Tesla was via his psychic connection to the universal consciousness, through which all knowledge may be gained for the truly worthy. My inter-dimensional spirit guide imparted this rudimentary knowledge to me with the understanding that I must pass this knowledge on to others. Slashdot appeared to be the ideal medium for this transmission. When this basic understanding of the nature of our universes is quantified and codified, NASA's Pleiades Supercomputer will find the answers to zero point energy, anti-gravity, the transmutation of matter, interstellar and inter-dimensional travel, and time travel.

These discoveries must be shared with the entire world for the benefit of the entire world, and not withheld to empower an elite few.

Ironically, my Slashdot validation code is "repress"
Sing Along With Me Folks by Crypto+Gnome · 2012-10-02 19:17 · Score: 1

I'm sure eventually we'll get enough size and resolution:

It's the simulation that doesn't end.
Yes, it goes on and on my friend.
Someone started running it not knowing what it was,
And they'll continue singing it forever just because...

Well to be perfectly honest:
(1) Most people don't realise they're in a simulation
(2) The few with "suspicions" have no idea where the off switch is

--
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Can it tell me what happened in the future? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 19:25 · Score: 0

I'd like to know stock prices next week, next month, next year, etc. Who won the Super Bowl, etc...
Bolshoi, you say? by leromarinvit · 2012-10-02 20:19 · Score: 0

I recommend you get rid of this Stalin fella in the next iteration. He's up to no good.

--
Proud member of the Ferengi Socialist Party.
Pretty sure their model didn't come close by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 22:47 · Score: 0

How foolish to think that any number of modern CPUs, in their current state, could come close to being an accurate model of the universe. Our field of vision of the universe is but a miniscule slice and it is quite clear that though we will always "know more than we ever have before", the model is nothing but a model of our thoughts on what small parts we know of, not any real representation of what our universe really is.
1. Re:Pretty sure their model didn't come close by ledow · 2012-10-02 23:15 · Score: 2
  
  As centuries of relying on Newtonian physics demonstrate:
  It doesn't need to be accurate. It just needs to be close enough when looking at the parts you're interested in.
  Nobody claims to be simulating a universe down to the sub-atomic level. They are just claiming that: the best they can simulate their own ideas of how it formed correlate with roughly what we see when we peek at the sky.
  It's like saying that there's no point in simulating a rocket launch if you can't model every atom. There is. And it saves us a lot of work and tells us when something is (probably) wrong with our design.
  Newtonian physics was THE most accurate method for centuries, correlated to millions of independent experiments to be correct. The fact that it's nowhere NEAR the full story of how things operate is neither here nor there, and we still teach it in schools because it's still accurate ENOUGH.
2. Re:Pretty sure their model didn't come close by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-02 23:39 · Score: 0
  
  You missed the point of my statement completely.
  I'm not saying the model is worthless, just that the claim that they "modeled the universe" is ridiculous.
3. Re:Pretty sure their model didn't come close by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-03 00:01 · Score: 0
  
  Why is that?
  They have a valid model of a given universe with given parameters to a certain degree of "fineness".
  Why is that NOT modelling the universe?
  It is a model.. a mathematical model.
4. Re:Pretty sure their model didn't come close by Dazzadowling · 2012-10-03 00:03 · Score: 1
  
  Why is that? They have a valid model of a given universe with given parameters to a certain degree of "fineness". Why is that NOT modelling the universe? It is a model.. a mathematical model. (hmmm... interesting... one reply while logged in and one not)
Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-03 00:08 · Score: 0

I'm curious what purpose this research serves, other than the obvious "need-to-know."
Some ideas I've considered include creating a more realistic video game (e.g. Mass Effect 4), ideas for a new Ron Howard movie, or perhaps the outcome of this simulation will resolve a $20 bet between two astrophysicists. I'm guessing none of these are the actual answer, of course...
What purpose do you serve? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-03 01:02 · Score: 0

Your work would be done by someone else if you didn't do it. Your discoveries won't be noticed by the rest of the world, the children you produce would have come from someone else if you hadn't been born.
So what purpose do you serve?
Or is the question, like yours, meaningless and that the purpose of existence is to exist.
recursion by arekq · 2012-10-03 01:12 · Score: 1

> astronomers are turning to supercomputers that can simulate the entire evolution of the universe
does the simulation simulate supercomputers that simulate the entire evolution of the universe?
Nice to see NASA still running SGI by PotatoHead · 2012-10-03 02:50 · Score: 1

And that cluster is 11th? Nice!!

--
Blogging because I can...
Obligatory... by braindrainbahrain · 2012-10-03 04:39 · Score: 1

You may think it's a long way to the chemist's but that's peanuts compared to space!
(Just kidding! Thanks for your informative post!)
Re:How long until... SPOILER ALERT! by mcgrew · 2012-10-03 05:29 · Score: 1

You didn't read all five books, did you? The meaning of 42 is revealed:
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
We apologize for the inconvenience.

--
Free Martian Whores!
Did they discover me? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-10-03 08:00 · Score: 0

It would be cool if their simulations actually led to me! I would be most flattered! ;)
A minor quibble by Twisted64 · 2012-10-07 12:09 · Score: 1

It's 'sheer' cost. Wouldn't have brought it up, but you raised the bar with the rest of your post.

--
Consciousness is a myth. Trust me.