• From: Peru
  • Registered: 2004-08-06

Topic: A duplicate universe, trapped in a computer

Consortium of scientists simulates 'cube of creation'

Tim Radford, science editor
Thursday June 2, 2005
The Guardian

Scientists have recreated a vast segment of the universe inside a computer and written a brief history of time, black holes and galaxy formation.
The Millennium Simulation - the biggest exercise of its kind - required 25 million megabytes of memory. But it tracked the 14bn-year history of creation in months and now offers a tool to explore mysterious events in galaxies far away and long ago.

"It is the biggest thing we have ever done," said Carlos Frenk of the University of Durham. "It is probably the biggest thing ever in computational physics. For the first time we have a replica universe which looks just like the real one. So we can now for the first time begin to experiment with the universe.

"Unlike people who study human behaviour, who can study many humans, cosmologists have been stuck with only the one universe. Well, from today we have more than one."

The British, German, US and Canadian astrophysicists in the Virgo consortium, led by Volker Springel of the Max Planck Institute in Germany, report in Nature today that they already knew the so-called "initial conditions" of the universe.

These were imprinted in the cosmic microwave background radiation, the embers of the Big Bang, when the universe was only 400,000 years old.

In the last few years, they have been able to determine that all the stars, galaxies, black holes and their radiation add up to a trifling 5% of the universe. Around a quarter of creation is mysterious stuff called cold dark matter. The other 70% is now known to be the even more baffling "dark energy", a kind of antigravity that is pushing the universe apart.

Prof Frenk said: "We programmed the biggest computer in Europe with these ingredients and the laws of physics and we just let it compute a universe. We let it churn away - in fact we shut down all science in Germany, we excluded all German science for a month while this very large machine ground away - and at the end we got this beautiful universe, which for all intents and purposes looks like the real thing.

"We are now going to study it in detail. What we are going to do now is ask all the questions we wanted to ask about the real universe, but we have no way to tell.

"For example, we now understand that black holes are crucial in determining the properties of galaxies. In real universes, it is very difficult to ask any detailed questions, but in the simulation we can ask where do the black holes form? When? How big are they? What do they do to galaxies?"

The simulated universe represents a cube of creation with sides that measure 2bn light years. It is home to 20m galaxies, large and small. It has been designed to answer questions about the past, but it offers the tantalising opportunity to fast-forward in time to the slow death of the galaxies, billions of years from now.

But the first challenge was to understand the role of black holes in the formation of galaxies. At the heart of the Milky Way - the collection of 100bn stars that is home to the sun and the Earth - is a black hole with the mass of 100m suns. It occupies a tiny space, no bigger than the solar system.

"And yet, it's amazing that the existence of this little monster in the centre determines how big a galaxy can grow. It eats material and it spews out energy and it seems to control, essentially, the evolution of galaxies. We are now beginning to understand, through the simulation, the role that quasars and black holes play in galaxy formation," Prof Frenk said.

"We asked the question: when did the first black holes form? The answer is: they formed when the universe was only about 1m years old. We now know it is about 14bn years old.

"If we wanted to go and find the first black hole today, where should we look? We now know if we want to find the earliest black holes, we need to look into the very centres of collections of galaxies called galaxy clusters: they are the biggest beacons in the universe, these collections of thousands of very bright galaxies very tightly packed together."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/science/ … 95,00.html

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2 Reply by impatiens

  • impatiens
  • Guest

Re: A duplicate universe, trapped in a computer

Ayahuasca wrote:

Consortium of scientists simulates 'cube of creation'

Cube of creation, eh!

Thanks for that A. Brought to mind this article by Jay Weidner. Here's an excerpt from page 4 of the piece.

"The monolith also represents the 'cube of space' or the 'container of creation' in alchemy. The cube of space is the container that holds reality. Kubrick originally intended for the object in the film to be a tetrahedron pyramid. This would have been appropriate to what he was attempting to convey because the tetrahedron is the building block of the third dimension. It is also the foundation of the Platonic solids. But Kubrick decided to junk the tetrahedron idea in favor of the monolith. It is said that Kubrick himself created the first drawing of what the monolith would look like, including it's dimensions. The black, single stone becomes the container of creation and the alchemical cube at the same time. It is, in a way, a cubed brick. Is this another trick of Stanley's, who's last name (Kubrick, 'Cubed-Brick') mirror's that concept so clearly? This black stone of creation is also one of the main features in the Islamic religion, where a black meteorite sits near the kaaba, or cube of space, in the Arabian city of Mecca. Kubrick has combined these many deeply held spiritual traditions and symbols and refashioned them into the monolith, or stone, that is constructed in the same dimensions as the movie screen on which it will be projected.

Kubrick completely reveals that he understands the Great Work. The monolith represents the Philosopher Stone, the Book of Nature and the Film that initiates. Stanley Kubrick has truly made the Book of Nature onto film. Using powdered silver nitrates, that are then glued onto a strip of plastic, and then projected onto the movie screens of our mind, Kubrick has proven himself to be the ultimate alchemist-artist of the late 20th century.

The greatest works of art are trying to achieve exactly what Kubrick is attempting here. With the understanding of what '2001' is actually saying, Kubrick takes his place alongside DaVinci, and possibly even Shakespeare, as being one of the greatest artists of all time.

There is one last interesting note to all of this. The great alchemist Fulcanelli and others have said that a great transmutation of the human species is going to takes place at some time near the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. Kubrick picked the date 2001 - which is astonishingly close to other dates prescribed by many ancient alchemists - including Nostradamus. What are we to make of the strange date that Kubrick picked out for the final transformation of the human species?

Somehow, Kubrick knew. "

http://www.jayweidner.com/kubrick4.htm

  • From: sw tz rl nd
  • Registered: 2004-03-25

Re: A duplicate universe, trapped in a computer

Welcome to the Matrix.

ermolai's Website

  • Registered: 2004-08-19

Re: A duplicate universe, trapped in a computer

What I don't understand is this:
The scientists that programmed that computer entered the initial conditions of the universe, which were most likely mostly assumptions instead of facts (they don't know how it works yet after all). Then they had to tell the computer how to proceed with those initial conditions: again, they would use mostly assumptions to tell the computer what to do (still not knowing how the universe works). Then they let the simulation run and at the end all their assumptions are calculated into some "facts" and that becomes "truth". How can you properly understand how something works if you first rebuild it the way you think it works, and then study the copy? Scientists...

  • From: sw tz rl nd
  • Registered: 2004-03-25

Re: A duplicate universe, trapped in a computer

That's how most of the "science" nowadays work smile

ermolai's Website

  • From: LA
  • Registered: 2005-09-18

Re: A duplicate universe, trapped in a computer

Aprogas wrote:

What I don't understand is this:
The scientists that programmed that computer entered the initial conditions of the universe, which were most likely mostly assumptions instead of facts (they don't know how it works yet after all). Then they had to tell the computer how to proceed with those initial conditions: again, they would use mostly assumptions to tell the computer what to do (still not knowing how the universe works). Then they let the simulation run and at the end all their assumptions are calculated into some "facts" and that becomes "truth". How can you properly understand how something works if you first rebuild it the way you think it works, and then study the copy? Scientists...

It doesn't quite work as you described Aprogas.  My experience is that the model is built based on what we know.  A set of initial conditions are used in the model and the model's prediction is evaluated.  If the predictions are not correct then a new set of initial conditions is applied until the model converges with the expected results.  There are other problems associated with this type of computer modeling.  The equations used to built the model may not be correct so changing initial conditions will not provide, obviously, the correct (or shall I say "expected") answer.  At this point in time it is a trial and error business but we must continue to try in our quest to learn..........Nobody said it was going to be easy.