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For the First Time, We Have a Detailed Model of the Universe
Atlantic ^ | May 8 2014, | Megan Garber

Posted on 05/11/2014 12:12:47 PM PDT by lbryce

It is, if you except the powers of human memory, the closest thing we have to a time machine.

Scientists have created the first realistic model of the universe, capable of recreating 13 billion years of cosmic evolution. The simulation is called “Illustris,” and it renders the universe as a cube (350 million light-years on each side) with, its creators say, unprecedented resolution: The virtual universe uses 12 billion 3-D “pixels,” or resolution elements, to create its rendering. And that rendering includes both normal matter and dark matter.

The rendering, importantly, also includes elliptical and spiral galaxies—bodies that, because of numerical inaccuracies and incomplete physical models, we'd been unable to see with such detail in previous simulations of the universe. It also does a better job than previous renderings of modeling the feedback from star formation, supernova explosions, and supermassive black holes.

YouTube:Illustris Simulation: Most detailed simulation of our Universe

(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: cosmology; science; space; universe
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To: lbryce

This is wonderful news. Now we can find all those missing socks.


21 posted on 05/11/2014 1:13:21 PM PDT by UCANSEE2 (Lost my tagline on Flight MH370. Sorry for the inconvenience.)
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To: Zeneta
NASA:All About Dark Energy, Dark Matter
22 posted on 05/11/2014 1:14:48 PM PDT by lbryce (Barack Hussein Obama:The Worst is Yet to Come)
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To: lbryce
better than this one???

23 posted on 05/11/2014 1:15:21 PM PDT by Chode (Stand UP and Be Counted, or line up and be numbered - *DTOM* -vvv- NO Pity for the LAZY - 86-44)
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To: driftdiver

LOL. Exactly.


24 posted on 05/11/2014 1:15:23 PM PDT by lbryce (Barack Hussein Obama:The Worst is Yet to Come)
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To: Zeneta
I looked up the webpage for the simulator ...
/www.whatisreality.co.uk/universe is the webpage given in the book, "Hidden in Plain Sight II." That redirects to www.ipod.org.uk/reality/universe
25 posted on 05/11/2014 1:20:31 PM PDT by Cboldt
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To: Chode

I like yours better. I can read the little thingys that look like clocks.


26 posted on 05/11/2014 1:20:55 PM PDT by Viking2002
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To: lbryce

There is nothing more boring than everything in the Universe.


27 posted on 05/11/2014 1:20:57 PM PDT by UCANSEE2 (Lost my tagline on Flight MH370. Sorry for the inconvenience.)
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To: Cboldt
Dark energy is a total hack. Nothing in the Standard Model explains it. There's no reason for it. It's just there. There is no force carrier particle. It actually is an intrinsic part of space itself. And it's perfectly balanced.

There's a good layman's discussion of DE on the Science Channel (about 2.5 minutes). Physicists are baffled by it. It seems to even hide when they actively try to search for it.

With DE we avoid the depressing slow heat-death of the universe as the last star dies burns out with nothing left but a dead cinder.

Instead the universe will entire spectacularly (the Big Rip). And you can actually watch it happen 16+ billion years from now if you travel in an FTL spacecraft. You can actually sit in Douglas Adams' Restaurant at the End of the Universe and drink campaign as watch it all happen, faster and faster. The galaxies will fly apart, then the stars, then the planets, then you.

And then we have dark matter. Again the Standard Model doesn't explain it. There's no reason for it. It's just there. Why? Well, it certainly makes the galaxies pretty to look at. Otherwise they would be featureless fuzzballs. And you have to admit the Hubble images are indeed very pretty.

What's even more improbable is that we can actually see those galaxies. The matter density gradient function has to be balanced on a knife edge to see large structures at literally the opposite end of the universe (by all rights the sky ought to be a gray fog or all black). The Hubble Ultra Deep Field is the most improbable image ever taken.

Take all three together: the DE (Big Rip), DM (cool looking structures as cosmological distances), the UDF (we can actually see those structures). See a pattern?

It's all as if something, or someone, likes to show off His handiwork.

28 posted on 05/11/2014 1:21:21 PM PDT by Gideon7
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To: lbryce

An interesting exercise & graphical application, FWIW. (Part of it looked somewhat like a Doctor Who intro ;-)

The video mentioned that “over a hundred thousand lines of code” were used to generate this simulation – I guess it’s easier to model 13 Billion years of cosmic evolution and Trillions of objects (both seen AND unseen) than it is to come up with a functional on-line Gov’t “healthcare” system...


29 posted on 05/11/2014 1:23:03 PM PDT by mikrofon (Space BUMP)
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To: Zeneta
When looking for that gravity/universe simulator, I ran into Dr. Thomas's description of a universe that "just is," and that time (and expansion) are artifacts of our being embedded in the universe.

I tend to think something in the nature of expansion has to exist, to accommodate the travel of light.

30 posted on 05/11/2014 1:23:50 PM PDT by Cboldt
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To: Cboldt
Based on recent observations, scientific models that we exist as part of a much larger realm of innumerable universes aka the Multiverse.

One basis for this is phenomena observed known as the Great Attractor. This is an utterly fascinating revealing MUST READ article

Daily Galaxy:Implications of The Great Attractor

31 posted on 05/11/2014 1:23:54 PM PDT by lbryce (Barack Hussein Obama:The Worst is Yet to Come)
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To: Chode

Where are the mermaids? (Often a fixture on the earliest maps of the known Earth.)


32 posted on 05/11/2014 1:25:45 PM PDT by lbryce (Barack Hussein Obama:The Worst is Yet to Come)
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To: lbryce

Dark Energy.

From NASA.

More is unknown than is known. We know how much dark energy there is because we know how it affects the Universe’s expansion. Other than that, it is a complete mystery. But it is an important mystery. It turns out that roughly 68% of the Universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the Universe. Come to think of it, maybe it shouldn’t be called “normal” matter at all, since it is such a small fraction of the Universe.

This is called “Science” today.

The acceptance of an assumption that is necessary to create a model of an assumption.


33 posted on 05/11/2014 1:28:43 PM PDT by Zeneta (Thoughts in time and out of season.)
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To: lbryce
a couple of points...

1)at the start of the video their model is completely asymmetrical, yet over time symmetry evolves, i don't see how either is possible

2)to create a model they need to calculate the center/origin of the universe, where/in what direction do they estimate it is?

34 posted on 05/11/2014 1:32:06 PM PDT by Chode (Stand UP and Be Counted, or line up and be numbered - *DTOM* -vvv- NO Pity for the LAZY - 86-44)
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To: Chode
Check out the local mermaids on a map that once considered cutting edge cartographical.
35 posted on 05/11/2014 1:32:22 PM PDT by lbryce (Barack Hussein Obama:The Worst is Yet to Come)
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To: lbryce

Kinda flat looking to me, if it’s the universe where
is all the stuff around it?


36 posted on 05/11/2014 1:33:02 PM PDT by tet68 ( " We would not die in that man's company, that fears his fellowship to die with us...." Henry V.)
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To: driftdiver

Honey, directions to the universe?
Don’t be silly, I know it like the back of my hand.
We only have to go back a couple of parsecs and I’ll
know right where we are...


37 posted on 05/11/2014 1:34:46 PM PDT by tet68 ( " We would not die in that man's company, that fears his fellowship to die with us...." Henry V.)
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To: lbryce

That map is way more interesting than the video.
And your point is well made too.


38 posted on 05/11/2014 1:36:47 PM PDT by right way right (America has embraced the suck of Freedumb.)
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To: lbryce
good question, musta got cut from the final release...
39 posted on 05/11/2014 1:41:12 PM PDT by Chode (Stand UP and Be Counted, or line up and be numbered - *DTOM* -vvv- NO Pity for the LAZY - 86-44)
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To: lbryce
there be dragons too...
40 posted on 05/11/2014 1:43:20 PM PDT by Chode (Stand UP and Be Counted, or line up and be numbered - *DTOM* -vvv- NO Pity for the LAZY - 86-44)
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