Comments on: Watch This: The Most Realistic Simulation of Spiral Galaxy Formation to Date

By: realta fuar

realta fuar — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 04:12:47 +0000

@red really? You could write such a program at home using excel, I suppose. Just because you can’t do something or know HOW to do something, that’s no reason to think that other people don’t. You don’t believe the simulation is realistic? then write a paper refuting the physics involved and stop spouting ignorant, indefensible opinions. Oh, sorry, EVERYONE’S opinion is now worth as much as people who spend their lives studying a given phenomena; my mistake….

By: MadSciKat =^..^=

MadSciKat =^..^= — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 20:49:24 +0000

What? No hi-def version? I want my money back!

By: Ken Albertsen

Ken Albertsen — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 12:40:01 +0000

very cool, particularly the first seconds. However, the center (giant black hole?) appears to be spinning in the opposing direction than the arms of the galaxy. Is that a visual oddity – like wheels appearing to spin backwards on vehicles on film?

By: red

red — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 22:48:01 +0000

Anybody can make a simulated program that can go through some sort of collection processes and end up looking like our galaxy. But there is no way for scientists to know all the forces (or force carriers) and the way things interacted over a billion years. I think it is naive to think just because we have a good handle on how things in the universe are currently working (over our insanely brief existence) that somehow we can just rewind things and know how the universe looked and acted billions of years ago. Personal opinion: while it ends up looking like a galaxy I don’t think it is at all how they formed. It looks like a huge portion of the matter is just pored in from the top. And for all of those who think that time is real, at least down at the quantum level, are sadly mistaken. For how we have defined time makes it impossible to try and understand something that truly has no meaning of of the human construct of time. One day physicists will see this error.

By: Kevin Johnson

Kevin Johnson — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 19:10:31 +0000

I congratulate the scientists that created this program, but I take it with a grain of salt. When scientists can model the weather and successfully predict what will happen two weeks in advance with a computer, then I will trust a simulation of the birth and formation of a galaxy which is massively more complex. We have to learn to crawl before we can walk I guess.

By: Justin

Justin — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 19:59:40 +0000

Very, very cool. However, if I could make one change, I would have some type of counter in a corner giving a rough idea of the time passage per second or something along those lines. Otherwise, awesome!

By: floodmouse

floodmouse — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 16:46:16 +0000

“If DARK MATTER remains an unknown quantity how could it have been simulated?” – “Dark matter” is just something made up to explain an otherwise unexplained gravity effect that can be measured mathematically. What they’re really simulating is this measurement . . .

Disclaimer: I am SO far from being a mathematician that you probably shouldn’t take my word for this.

By: AR Tresh

AR Tresh — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 10:28:16 +0000

“…., which allowed them to track the motion of 60 million particles of gas and dark matter for over 13 billion simulated years.”

If DARK MATTER remains an unknown quantity how could it have been simulated?

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 09:03:39 +0000

The word “Big Bang” in referring to the creation off the universe has worn out it’s welcome. http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/06/there-was-no-big-bang-say-several-leading-cosmologists-a-galaxy-classic.html

By: karthik

karthik — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 14:14:36 +0000

good stuff…………………