Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Creation in action - Disk Galaxy Formation

Disk Galaxy Forms. Supercomputer simulation NASA APOD
Video Credit: Fabio Governato et al. (U. Washington), N-Body Shop,
NASA Advanced Supercomputing
"Strange and fascinating cosmic dance"
APOD

Another Space Theology bookmark
Creation in action: Supercomputer simulation of the formation of a disk galaxy.

Under no circumstances - Do not miss this one!

Link





Where's the Theology of it?
Well, first of all, seeing in front of your eyes the evolution of a disk galaxy shape in Giga light years is an awesome and highly educational experience. This NASA Advanced Supercomputing video gives what is very difficult for us mere mortals to visualize without help of such simulation. Surely there are mathematicians who can see such clouds of pixels in their mind just on the basis of mathematical thinking but I think even they benefit from the number crunching assistant provided by the binary machines.

Secondly, Fabio Governato and his friends who produced this magnificent simulation may have had to add some input into the calculations. Let me dare to suggest that possibly they even had to do some experimentation and tweaking of calculations and parameters in order to produce such a fabulous simulation of a bar galaxy. For example, it is said that the simulation includes Dark energy although not showing it and the central black holes in the centre of the galaxies must provide some computational complexities of their own.

The estimated age of the Universe is one of the parameters suggesting a time framework for the expected end result.

Or am I wrong, and all it took was to provide a resource for a chaotic sea of pixel and simulated laws of nature used by the supercomputer to creat the shape all by itself? Automatically, so to say... without human intelligence.

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