I think your skepticism here is a little extreme. Gravity and pressure aren’t magical forces forever beyond the ken of man, you know. We have a fairly good grasp of how they work, and pretty good reason to presume that they will work elsewhere the same they work here. And there is nothing occult about the transformation of matter in gaseous, liquid, and solid states – we have a fairly decent handle on how this works too.

The likelihood of variable conditions across an entire planet’s surface actually increases the likelihood that the simulation will be broadly correct – that is to say, that somewhere on the planet rock vapor will condense into solid form and fall to the ground. Let’s not forget that there are many different substances in rocks with many different freezing/boiling points, so its not as if the temperature and pressure ranges are required to be all that stringent.

The probability that the simulations will be exactly right in all the particulars might be exceedingly low, but the probability that the simulations will be broadly correct on something as general as a phases changes of matter will be almost certainly considerably higher than “improbable”.

It will be a long, long time before we can actually get close enough to make direct measurements. Does not mean we should simply give up thinking? Can’t know for sure, no point guessing? Just accept our ignorance and forget about it? No, we make what inferences we can with the data we have, and move on.

For example which programming environment would you use, and what variables and constants would you put in – just to get us started? I presume you are seasoned astrophysicists and are able to compute the orbits of planets, accounting for gravity and momentum, whilst also being able to compute the physical properties of light, heat, gas, and matter, whilst accounting for pressure and gravity? Then we might be able to have a more sensible and intellectually rigorous discussion.

On the other hand, this is the internet..

That means that one side of the planet is always facing the sun,it isn’t hard to believe that the other side is much cooler, as is the outer atmosphere of that side, which could potentially cause rock to change from vapor to liquid to solid and rain back down.

If the earth were slightly cooler, we could have more hail?

I’m guessing here, but one or both of you are being ironic, right?

Popular reports like this frequently miss the point of doing such simulations. Yes, it paints a pretty picture for what they could be like. But more importantly, the simulation tell us “to the best of our scientific understanding, _this_ is what is _should_ look like. From the simulation you get predictions of the spectra of the atmosphere, which you then try to measure to compare reality and theory.

CoRoT-7b is a transiting planet. With finer resolution observations, it should be possible to determine the atmospheric spectra on transit, and compare it with the simulation, ie. theory.