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Supercomputer Simulation of the Universe

MacSA

MacSA

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jun 4, 2003
1,803
5
UK
Watched this on Newsnight, they had to turn off their supercomputer to everyone apart from the team involved and it still took a month to crunch the numbers.
 
MacSA said:
http://www.mpg.de/english/illustrat...leases/2005/pressRelease20050517/presselogin/

An international team of astrophysicists led by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics presents the worldwide largest simulation of the universe and an accurate theoretical model for the growth of galaxies and supermassive black holes

Movies and still pictures here:

http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/galform/press/

Scroll down to the bottom, the images would also make great wallpaper. :)
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Anyone seen what kind of computer/cluster they are using?
 
combatcolin said:
Watched this on Newsnight, they had to turn off their supercomputer to everyone apart from the team involved and it still took a month to crunch the numbers.
Click to expand...
And what answer did they get?

42.

Sorry, couldn't resist. :p Seriously, though, that's some pretty intersting stuff.
 
AppleAce said:
And what answer did they get?

42.
Click to expand...

Thought the same thing myself. Great stuff - and its amazing how organic it looks :D

But what are the Mpc/h and Gpc/h units? I'm guessing the Mpc and Gpc are mega and giga parsecs but I'm lost as to the "/h"

D
 
Mr. Anderson said:
Thought the same thing myself. Great stuff - and its amazing how organic it looks :D

But what are the Mpc/h and Gpc/h units? I'm guessing the Mpc and Gpc are mega and giga parsecs but I'm lost as to the "/h"

D
Click to expand...

/h per hour perhaps a parsec is a distance

Parsec: A unit of astronomical length based on the distance from Earth at which stellar parallax is one second of arc and equal to 3.258 light-years, 3.086 × 1013 kilometers, or 1.918 × 1013 miles.

it makes sense to me
 
barneygumble said:
/h per hour perhaps a parsec is a distance

Parsec: A unit of astronomical length based on the distance from Earth at which stellar parallax is one second of arc and equal to 3.258 light-years, 3.086 × 1013 kilometers, or 1.918 × 1013 miles.

it makes sense to me
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that makes sense, but wow, that's some fast zooming :D

it was just the Mps and Gps that got me confused I guess.

D
 
Mr. Anderson said:
that makes sense, but wow, that's some fast zooming :D

it was just the Mps and Gps that got me confused I guess.

D
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it is astonishingly quick, i wonder how quick that computer would be at Seti@home. It would pumpout units every 10 seconds if that.
 
it couldn't be per hour; how could anything travel a million or billion parsecs in an hour, when it takes light itself 3.258 years to travel a single parsec? That would be a ridiculous violation of relativity.

I think h is standing for Planck's constant, which carries either electron volts or or joules multiplied by time as its units, which makes sense, as the projected slices are density fields for matter distibution, so Mpc/h would give you a distance/energy*time.
 
tpjunkie said:
it couldn't be per hour; how could anything travel a million or billion parsecs in an hour, when it takes light itself 3.258 years to travel a single parsec? That would be a ridiculous violation of relativity.

I think h is standing for Planck's constant, which carries either electron volts or or joules multiplied by time as its units, which makes sense, as the projected slices are density fields for matter distibution, so Mpc/h would give you a distance/energy*time.
Click to expand...

what would i know,i'm not an astrophysicist
 
ZLurker said:
Anyone seen what kind of computer/cluster they are using?
Click to expand...

I think they used this IBM setup. 4.2 teraflops.
--------------------------------

If you want to feel really insignificant, watch that "Slow flight" video. :eek:

By the way, was anyone able to download the 280MB poster on the page? It's been showing up as "Not Found" since this afternoon.
 
combatcolin said:
Watched this on Newsnight, they had to turn off their supercomputer to everyone apart from the team involved and it still took a month to crunch the numbers.
Click to expand...

They had a TB of RAM :eek: and even that was not enough as the OS took a chunk and the computer could not count a figures high enough, the lead programmer had to fudge the system to get it to do what the team wanted - while the program was running.

Somewhat scary if he messed up and crashed it!

Think it might have been a clustered 32bit affair, as a 64bit setup can count massive figures.
 
Upon reading the thread's title, I had high hopes someone had finally discovered proof that the universe is a computer simulation, running on a supercomputer from the future.

Drat! :(
 
localoid said:
Upon reading the thread's title, I had high hopes someone had finally discovered proof that the universe is a computer simulation, running on a supercomputer from the future.

Drat! :(
Click to expand...

Not yet, it's still only mathematically probable right now.
 
localoid said:
Upon reading the thread's title, I had high hopes someone had finally discovered proof that the universe is a computer simulation, running on a supercomputer from the future.
Click to expand...

I always assumed you guys were NPC's in a simulation I'm playing.;) Species human in the Milky Way section of the Eternal Sphere virtual world.
 
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