Astrophysicists Build Realistic Virtual Universe

sciencehabit writes "In the most detailed effort yet, astrophysicists and cosmologists have modeled the evolution of the universe right down to the formation of individual galaxies. The results of the mammoth computer simulation neatly match multiple astronomical observations, ranging from the distribution of galaxies in massive galaxy clusters to the amounts of neutral hydrogen gas in galaxies large and small (abstract). The findings once again neatly confirm cosmologists' standard theory of the basic ingredients of the universe and how it evolved—a result that may disappoint researchers hoping for new puzzles to solve."

Why are these simulations impressive?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was always confused by these simulations. Isn't it a tautology that the simulations correctly reproduce the universe we would expect as they were generated from laws derived from observations of this universe? If the results that were reproduced differed then wouldn't the simulation be a poor simulation? It's not like these simulations are a true experiment. Always seemed a bit like CS masturbation to me.

simulating a phenomena does not validate the model

[jclaer]

Choosing parameters that best simulate a model does not mean that model is correct.

Re:Why are these simulations impressive?

[supertall]

I thought the same thing at first. However, assuming that the simulation implements only the very fundamental building blocks of physics at it's core, it is interesting to see that they translate to match our observations on a macro scale. Given that, it's just a matter of what else we can glean from the simulation runs that we have yet to observe IRL. These new insights don't have to be taken as truth, but rather lead us to new observations.

Re:really?

[rubycodez]

and apparently also know (without sharing) why the observed mass of the Higgs boson is so tiny even though the max energy times the fermion/boson sum should be huge. wow they have it all figured out...or they "cooked the books"