The following quotes are taken from a news piece by the BBC available in its entirety
here.
"Astronomers have used supercomputers to re-create how the Universe evolved into the shape it is today."
"We have learned more about the Universe in the last 10 or 20 years than in the whole of human civilisation," said Professor Carlos Frenk, Ogden professor of fundamental physics at the University of Durham and co-author on the Nature report.
"We are now able, using the biggest, fastest supercomputers in the world, to recreate the whole of cosmic history," he told the BBC.
"English Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees told the BBC: "Now we have the Millennium Run simulations, we have the predictions of the theory in enough detail that we can see if there is a meshing together of how the world looks on the larger scale and the way we expect it should look according to our theories. It's a way to check our theories."
So the topic I propose for discussion (Big Bang and Cosmology Forum) is as follows:
Can mathematical simulations of evolutionary theories (cosmic OR biological) serve as tests of these theories in any way?
That is, can we use the results of such simulations to justifiably increase our confidence in the underlying assumptions of the theory, and thus our confidence in the validity of the theory itself?
This message has been edited by EZscience, 06-02-2005 12:09 PM