{"id":323,"date":"2006-06-16T07:36:34","date_gmt":"2006-06-16T07:36:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/06\/16\/simulate-this\/"},"modified":"2006-06-16T07:36:34","modified_gmt":"2006-06-16T07:36:34","slug":"simulate-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/06\/16\/simulate-this\/","title":{"rendered":"Simulate This"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rob Knop has another post to which I can only say “Amen!”, this time on the relatioship between simulation and experiment<\/a> (in response to this BoingBoing post<\/a> about a Sandia press release<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

Can simulations show us things that experiments cannot? Absolutely! In fact, if they didn’t, we wouldn’t bother doing simulations. This has been true for a long time. With experiments, we are limited to the resolution and capabilities of our detectors. In astronomy, for example, we don’t have the hundreds of millions of years necessary to watch the collision of a pair of galaxies unfold. All we can look at, effectively, are snapshots of pairs of galaxies who are in different stages of that dance. Simulations of galaxy interactions, on the other hand, can help us understand what happens when galaxies collide.<\/p>\n

However, in the end, if those simulations don’t have any connection to experiment or observational results, they don’t give us any insight at all. The simulations of the colliding galaxies must give us things that are consistent with what we do know from the snapshots we can take, or we will know the simulations are wrong. The physics underneath the simulations must be based on the theories that have been tested against observaitons and experiments.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This can extend to theoretical models more generally, not just computer simulations. Absent some concrete connection with experimentally observed reality, even a really elegant model is nothing but a toy.<\/p>\n

The problem here may be a particularly unfortunate choice of wording on the part of the press office at Sandia– the key sentence is “This change in the position of simulations in science — from weak sister to an ace card — is a natural outcome of improvements in computing, Fang says,” and a lot depends on how you take “ace card,” but it’s worth repeating: Experiments are always<\/strong> the key step in science, and nothing will change that.<\/p>\n

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Rob Knop has another post to which I can only say “Amen!”, this time on the relatioship between simulation and experiment (in response to this BoingBoing post about a Sandia press release): Can simulations show us things that experiments cannot? Absolutely! In fact, if they didn’t, we wouldn’t bother doing simulations. This has been true… Continue reading Simulate This<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,7,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-323","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-experiment","category-physics","category-science","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}