More Pretty Science Pictures

[doodab]

BBC News - Universe evolution recreated in lab

Awesome new computer simulation of the evolution of the universe. 3 months on a supercomputer to get the results....

Not much to add to that really.

I am tempted to subscribe to nature, £135. It seems to have got a lot cheaper.

[scooterscot]

The computer that ran the simulation revealed some disturbing truths...

[darmstadt]

I'll admit that I'm not a very science person but some of this is quite fascinating. I've been at launches of satellites numerous times and seen the first images that they transmitted back (ERS-1 and Meteosat) but for me the best and most interesting was being at ESTEC (*) one year. I was up there to look after a rather esoteric OS: AIX/370 but it also happened to be when the Hubble Space Telescope transmitted it's first images. We all sat in the canteen and it went all quiet as the image started to appear followed by cheers, quite exhilarating...


(* a very interesting place to go if you get the chance. I wanted a go in the gravity chamber but that was out of the question so settled on the 9 hole golf course instead...)

[doodab]

The computer that ran the simulation revealed some disturbing truths...

I think you'll find GRAPES are better for this sort of thing.

[scooterscot]

The symmetry between the two images is striking. Consider, only hundreds of years ago we were running around the African savannah with spears. And now today our understanding of nature allows us to simulate events long since past. The scope of which seems impossible to consider.

Fascinating we can produce this yet we don't know why humans have fewer genes than a cabbage. Or for that matter how they build us, if at all.

[doodab]

Fascinating we can produce this yet we don't know why humans have fewer genes than a cabbage. Or for that matter how they build us, if at all.

We are working it out though.

[OwlHoot]

BBC News - Universe evolution recreated in lab

Awesome new computer simulation of the evolution of the universe. 3 months on a supercomputer to get the results....

Not much to add to that really.

I am tempted to subscribe to nature, £135. It seems to have got a lot cheaper.

er, sorry to sound thick, but where is the actual animated simulation?

When I click the link (at clientco, whose servers are routed via Albania or somewhere) all I see is an interview with Kim Dotcom, and large though he is I don't think he played any significant role in the formation of the Universe.