Boner: It is still confusing...

Astrophysicists have created the most realistic computer simulation of the universe's evolution to date, tracking activity from the Big Bang to now -- a time span of around 14 billion years -- in high resolution.

Created by a team at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics (CfA) in collaboration with researchers at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS), the Arepo software provides detailed imagery of different galaxies in the local universe using a technique known as "moving mesh".

Unlike previous model simulators, such as the Gadget code, Arepo's hydrodynamic model replicates the gaseous formations following the Big Bang by using a virtual, flexible grid that has the capacity to move to match the motions of the gas, stars, dark matter and dark energy that make up space -- it's like a virtual model of the cosmic web, able to bend and flex to support the matter and celestial bodies that make up the universe. Old simulators instead used a more regimented, fixed, cubic grid.

"We took all the advantages of previous codes and removed the disadvantages," explained Volker Springel, the HITS astrophysicist who built the software. Springel, an expert in galaxy formation who helped build the Millennium Simulation to trace the evolution of 10 billion particles, used Harvard's Odyssey supercomputer to run the simulation. Its 1,024 processor cores allowed the team to compress 14 billion years worth of cosmic history in the space of a few months.

The results are spiral galaxies like the Milky Way and Andromeda that actually look like spiral galaxies -- not the blurred blobs depicted by previous simulators -- generated from data input that stretches as far back as the afterglow of the Big Bang, thus portraying a dramatic cosmic evolution (see the above video for a sneak peek of that evolution from four billion years after the Big Bang).

"We find that Arepo leads to significantly higher star formation rates for galaxies in massive haloes and to more extended gaseous disks in galaxies, which also feature a thinner and smoother morphology than their Gadget counterparts," the team states in a paper describing the technology.

Though the feat is impressive -- CfA astrophysicist Debora Sijacki compares the high-resolution simulation's improvement over previous models to that of the 24.5-metre aperture Giant Magellan Telescope's improvement over all telescopes -- the team aim to generate simulations of larger areas of the universe. If this is achieved, the team will have created not only the most realistic, but the biggest universe simulation ever.



>> ^BoneRemake:

this video is a waste without addition information.
what am I looking at. spiraling gas' or something.
what is the significance, why did nine people upvote something they probably do not understand.
what part of the universe is this ? why didnt it start at the beginning ?
WHY WHY FUCKING WHY.

I would title it, "The Only (Other) Cat Video I Will Ever Sift" and justify it by saying it's actually the same video, just in a different quantum state.>> ^Mauru:

Now if a feline scientist suddenly found a way to harvest the higgs boson particle for a clean source of energy and documented it on youtube ...
AND messenger would be the first one to find it...
Sifting it would make him a hypocrite amirite?

Now if a feline scientist suddenly found a way to harvest the higgs boson particle for a clean source of energy and documented it on youtube ...
AND messenger would be the first one to find it...

Sifting it would make him a hypocrite amirite?

The goal of posting this video was to spur interesting conversations on philosophical topics, but so far everyone (with an exception here and there) seems interested in discussing the same old atheist talking points and ignoring the content of the video entirely.

The argument that was made, I think, is that if you're an atheist you're leading a double life. On one hand, you are committed to this relativism which makes every value judgment subjective, but on the other hand, you live as though there are absolute values and meaning. As someone once said, you have to sit in Gods lap to slap his face. For instance, there is a story about a young man who turned in a paper about relative truth, and how there was no right and wrong, and the professor gave him an F. The student was pretty heated because the paper was well written and so he confronted his professor about the low grade. The professor told him the reason for the F was because He didn't like the color of the paper he was using. The student exclaimed "but that isn't fair!". The professor asked him what he meant by fair? That's when the student got it and then the professor changed his F to an A. The point being that while it's easy to wax philosophical about these points, no one really lives that way. We all have an idea of what is wrong, and if there is something the way it shouldn't be, then naturally there is also a way it ought to be. Where does that come from?

>> ^wraith:

@shiny:
What was your goal in posting this video?
Do you really think that given that atheism might lead one to the belief that there might be no point, no goal, no plan to one's life would lead an atheist to the realization that it would be better to trust ancient and unverifiable (or verifiably false) fables and hearsay about a supposed infallible plan for each and every particle in the universe that will ever exist?
Is "peace of mind" your best argument for the veracity of your religious beliefs?

>> ^dirkdeagler7:

>> ^dannym3141:
Firstly, i'm not happy with his or the writer in the story's understanding of the words "quantum" and "dimension". Especially the former. And secondly i'm questioning that any ..."quantum effect"... occured because he made a huge assumption that the umbrella man was involved. I can think of a billion reasons why it might have happened (however unlikely).
This is an interesting story so i have no idea why he started with the quantum spiel. Heartwarming story about a conspiracy theorist who was cured

The way i read it is, if you understand some about physics you may think you know the universe and it all makes sense. However if you start to look deeper and at the minor details of the universe, aka the quantum level, things start to become much less logical and intuitive. Therefore you must dig hard to find the true nature of things at this level, and often times the truth will be more strange or surprising than you ever imagined.
When people were first discovering that there was a charged particle orbiting a nucleus do you think they assumed it was actually a cloud or probability and not a constant circling point? Of course not that would seem absurd at first, much as it would be absurd to think that the umbrella man was a guy protesting actions by JFKs father!


That's a decent explanation of what he was trying to say, but i still think he said it poorly. A quantum dimension? A very small dimension? I hope it wasn't foolish to misunderstand.

I agree that it would be absurd to assume he was protesting JFK's father but that's not the point being made is it? I thought the point being made was that it was absurd to think anything other than him being there for 'shenanigans', which i think is bullcrap. I think it's an expected result to find he's there innocently.

>> ^dannym3141:

Firstly, i'm not happy with his or the writer in the story's understanding of the words "quantum" and "dimension". Especially the former. And secondly i'm questioning that any ..."quantum effect"... occured because he made a huge assumption that the umbrella man was involved. I can think of a billion reasons why it might have happened (however unlikely).
This is an interesting story so i have no idea why he started with the quantum spiel. Heartwarming story about a conspiracy theorist who was cured


The way i read it is, if you understand some about physics you may think you know the universe and it all makes sense. However if you start to look deeper and at the minor details of the universe, aka the quantum level, things start to become much less logical and intuitive. Therefore you must dig hard to find the true nature of things at this level, and often times the truth will be more strange or surprising than you ever imagined.

When people were first discovering that there was a charged particle orbiting a nucleus do you think they assumed it was actually a cloud or probability and not a constant circling point? Of course not that would seem absurd at first, much as it would be absurd to think that the umbrella man was a guy protesting actions by JFKs father!

@shiny:

What was your goal in posting this video?
Do you really think that given that atheism might lead one to the belief that there might be no point, no goal, no plan to one's life would lead an atheist to the realization that it would be better to trust ancient and unverifiable (or verifiably false) fables and hearsay about a supposed infallible plan for each and every particle in the universe that will ever exist?

Is "peace of mind" your best argument for the veracity of your religious beliefs?

>> ^nomino:

Imagine if these nano particles made it inside the blood stream.


I'm trying to, but I'm not sure I can.

>> ^nomino:

This can't be healthy. Imagine if these nano particles made it inside the blood stream.


It's risky, but it's another way of becoming a Superhero/villain.

Frankly that doesn't fly with me. It does not cost money to write a good script. This gets done before you even pick up the camera. You design your characters, the setting, and then lay out the time line of events.

THIS.. is what happens when you shoot first and write no script, and then during the editing process you let your 12 year old nephew play with it on the computer cause he just pirated after effects and really wanted to try out all the particle effects. I should be thankful he stayed away from digital pyrotechnics.

This can't be healthy. Imagine if these nano particles made it inside the blood stream.

If anything, it is just the catholic particle, because it explains why we have mass *rim shot*

I think it might be slightly irresponsible to call it the God particle.

It's more like the Tao particle than the God particle...

>> ^garmachi:

Please stop calling it the god particle.


Upvote twice if I could.