NASA Scientists Simulate Black Hole Collision 63
Krishna Dagli writes to tell us Yahoo! News is reporting that NASA scientists have managed to simulate the merger of two massive orbiting black holes. Using technology from Silicon Graphics, Inc. built from 20 SGI Altix systems the team was able to show how the resulting gravitational waves would interact with surrounding space.
didn't know processors have memory (Score:3, Funny)
Re:didn't know processors have memory (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think that's what they meant though.
Re:didn't know processors have memory (Score:1)
Really??? If you look down the bottom of TFA it says "Source: SGI" Given that TFA talks more about the SGI systems than than the actual experiment, and SGI wrote TFA, they should know better. But then again, it is just marketing....
Re:didn't know processors have memory (Score:4, Informative)
Re:didn't know processors have memory (Score:2, Informative)
In other words, you're able to use shared-memory forms of multi-processor programming, such as threads, instead of message-passing, as is used e.g. by clusters (think pthr
imagine (Score:2, Funny)
Black holes colliding? (Score:4, Funny)
Dude ... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Dude ... (Score:2)
Re:Dude ... (Score:2)
Re:Black holes colliding? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Black holes colliding? (Score:2)
Re:Black holes colliding? (Score:1)
Ob. Spinal Tap (Score:2)
Re:Black holes colliding? (Score:1)
Nothing sucks. Everything blows.
Summary (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Summary (Score:2)
Re:Money well spent (Score:2)
I think I'd want a PC that can do more than what $333.33 would buy.
Re:Money well spent (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Money well spent (Score:2)
How? (Score:4, Insightful)
I wasn't aware that we understood how one black hole worked so how can this team perform a simulation of two coming together and hope to get anything useful out? I admit there is an outside chance they will stumble on the correct result but can they prove it's correct?
Re:How? (Score:2)
Re:How? (Score:2)
The problem with your argument is that it can be used to justify any research no matter how hair brained. It could be used to justify research into perpetual motion machines or ID. I freely admit some money needs to be spent on blue sky research but even that should be justifiable. If the results that we get out of this experiment are nothing more than one researchers opinion then they are worth no more than a (very expensive) work of fiction. It's great that we are probing these things but there comes a po
Re:How? (Score:1)
Not really thats why research proposals get generally peer reviewed - which isn't always an ideal process, but it does generally get the perpetual motion machines, I've discovered the ether, and CPT violating transportation devices type projects thrown out.
Re:How? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How? (Score:1)
The supposed effects which have been observed as "indirect evidence" of black holes is a fantastic leap of faith with no basis in observable or testable reality (nor even in the above-mentioned mathematical models, i'll wager).
Re:How? (Score:1, Informative)
The "purely hypothetical mathematical model" is known as General Relativity - a theory which has sustained every test physicist could conceive so far.
Blacks holes itself not only were found to be the fate of any superdense object in this theory but are widely accepted by almost any physicist as real.
Wikipedia gets it right:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole [wikipedia.org]:
Re:How? (Score:2)
{
expected_phenomena = simulate(current_theory);
observed_phenomena = look_for_similar(expected_phenomena);
current_theory.refine(expected_phenomena, observed_phenomena);
}
Re:How? (Score:2)
Re:How? (Score:1, Insightful)
We have a pretty good idea. The equations being used to produce these simulations fit with observed evidence. About which, more:
> I admit there is an outside chance they will stumble on the correct result but can they prove it's correct?
See, this is the tricky part. We have a set of equations which look good mathematically. The equations fit
Re:How? (Score:2)
This calls for empirical methods! Fire up the cyclotron, it's time we started smashing black holes into each other!
Re:How? (Score:2)
And an interesting thing about Relativity is that the interior of a black hole cannot have any causual effect on anything outside the black hole. So we don't know what happen
That was just a simulation. (Score:2)
Dup? (Score:2)
Re:Dup? (Score:2, Informative)
That's good... (Score:2)
That's good to know, in case one is ever caught in the middle of two colliding black holes and you need to figure a way out of that sticky situation....
Re:That's good... (Score:1, Funny)
Re:That's good... (Score:2)
Black hole life preserver to the rescue![*] [sciencenews.org]
Ok, maybe not entirely rescue, but it would buy you time. Only 0.09 seconds to tell the truth, but it's something.
[*] Not tested in dual hole configuration, use at your own risk, no liability implied.
Some more info. (Score:5, Informative)
In the question and answer period, a student asked why this gap in the calculations. The professor explained there was no gap in the calculations, but rather, the result of the calculations was non-euclidean in nature, so it was physically impossible to display it in a 3d model. At about that time, half of the undergrad audience whispered a Keanu Reeves style "whoah..."
Don't ask me any of the details, this was years ago in a course on stellar astrophysics that I have mostly forgot. This is just something anecdotal. Astrophysicists have been working on this black hole merger thing for a very long time. The computer labs at the time had P133's running. I'd love to see what they're doing now, but that site wasn't very big on actual information.
Addendum (Score:3)
Re:Addendum (Score:2)
Re:Addendum (Score:2)
Call me a cynic, but my guess is the prof took out his old promo material, and is asking for more funding by showing what he's done so far. Either that, or they have recreated the same computing, but with more resolution or something.
Re:Some more info. (Score:2)
This is 3 month old news?! (Score:1, Redundant)
This article and movie was featured in New Scientist on 4.18.06.
Black holes collide in the best simulation yet
18:29 18 April 2006
NewScientist.com news service
Enlarge image
Black holes distort space-time (yellow lines) and emit gravitational waves as they spiral towards each other (Image: Henze/NASA)
Enlarge image
Simulations of the ripples in space-time produced when two black holes merge could help astronomers interpret future gravitational wave observations (Image: Henze/NASA)
The ripples in
Link to the paper and some comments (Score:1)
As mentioned in the paper, a lot of previous work has been done on this problem. Up to this point, one of the methods used was a ci [arxiv.org]
Request Clarification (Score:1)
Karma Whore (Score:1)
*sigh* problems (Score:2)
first off, the result is an obvious PR piece for SGI. Such a slant taints the reason for the piece - making it impossible to really judge the significance of the computation. The contactacts ARE the SGI PR folks.
next, the article frames this an achievement in simulation that was "made possible" by the computer. This framing shows the lack of understanding about simulation by the author. In all computer simulation, there is a tradeoff between realism/acc
SGI Altix Systems? (Score:2)
String Theory - Gravity Waves (Score:1)
do we really know that much about black holes? (Score:1)
anyways thats just my opinion