News tagged with computer simulations

RNA reactor could have served as a precursor of life

(PhysOrg.com) -- Nobody knows quite how life originated on Earth, but most scientists agree that living cells did not abruptly appear from nonliving cells in a single step. Instead, there were probably a series ...

Physics / General Physics

created Jul 11, 2011 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (27) | comments 103 | with audio podcast feature

Physicists investigate fate of five-dimensional black strings

(PhysOrg.com) -- While black holes in four-dimensional space-time are stable and can persist for a long time, their higher-dimensional analogues are usually unstable. One such theoretical analogue is a five-dimensional ...

Physics / General Physics

created Sep 10, 2010 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (36) | comments 14 | with audio podcast feature

Bering Strait may be global temperature stabilizer

(Phys.org) -- A diverse group of climate researchers has found after running computer simulations that the strait that separates North America and Russia might be serving as a global temperature stabilizer. ...

Space & Earth / Earth Sciences

created Apr 10, 2012 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (10) | comments 61 | with audio podcast report

Nuclear fusion simulation shows high-gain energy output

(PhysOrg.com) -- High-gain nuclear fusion could be achieved in a preheated cylindrical container immersed in strong magnetic fields, according to a series of computer simulations performed at Sandia National ...

Physics / General Physics

created Mar 20, 2012 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (43) | comments 120 | with audio podcast

Smart, self-healing hydrogels open new possibilities in medicine, engineering

University of California, San Diego bioengineers have developed a self-healing hydrogel that binds in seconds, as easily as Velcro, and forms a bond strong enough to withstand repeated stretching. The material ...

Chemistry / Polymers

created Mar 05, 2012 | popularity 5 / 5 (7) | comments 2 | with audio podcast

Computer simulations suggest graphynes may be even more useful than graphene

(PhysOrg.com) -- The past several years have seen a virtual explosion in the amount of research dedicated to graphene and as a result there has been a nearly constant stream of news pertaining to new discoveries ...

Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials

created Mar 05, 2012 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (10) | comments 26 | with audio podcast report

Mysterious electron acceleration explained

A mysterious phenomenon detected by space probes has finally been explained, thanks to a massive computer simulation that was able to precisely align with details of spacecraft observations. The finding could ...

Physics / General Physics

created Feb 27, 2012 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (12) | comments 18 | with audio podcast

A spider web's strength lies in more than its silk

While researchers have long known of the incredible strength of spider silk, the robust nature of the tiny filaments cannot alone explain how webs survive multiple tears and winds that exceed hurricane strength.

Technology / Computer Sciences

created Feb 01, 2012 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (11) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Giant planet ejected from the solar system

(PhysOrg.com) -- Just as an expert chess player sacrifices a piece to protect the queen, the solar system may have given up a giant planet and spared the Earth, according to an article recently published in ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Nov 10, 2011 | popularity 4.2 / 5 (21) | comments 34 | with audio podcast

Astronomers pin down galaxy collision rate

(PhysOrg.com) -- A new analysis of images from the Hubble Space Telescope combined with supercomputer simulations of galaxy collisions has cleared up years of confusion about the rate at which smaller galaxies ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Oct 27, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (2) | comments 1 | with audio podcast

Genetic difference in staph offers clues as to why some patients get infections from cardiac implants

New research suggests that some patients develop a potentially deadly blood infection from their implanted cardiac devices because bacterial cells in their bodies have gene mutations that allow them to stick ...

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Oct 24, 2011 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (5) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Hints of universal behavior seen in exotic three-atom states

A novel type of inter-particle binding predicted in 1970 and observed for the first time in 2006, is forming the basis for an intriguing kind of ultracold quantum chemistry. Chilled to nano-kelvin temperatures, ...

Physics / Quantum Physics

created Sep 23, 2011 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (10) | comments 13 | with audio podcast

Switching from coal to natural gas would do little for global climate, study indicates

Although the burning of natural gas emits far less carbon dioxide than coal, a new study concludes that a greater reliance on natural gas would fail to significantly slow down climate change. The study appears ...

Space & Earth / Environment

created Sep 08, 2011 | popularity 4.6 / 5 (13) | comments 51 | with audio podcast

Astrophysicists report first simulation to create a Milky Way-like galaxy

(PhysOrg.com) -- After nine months of number-crunching on a powerful supercomputer, a beautiful spiral galaxy matching our own Milky Way emerged from a computer simulation of the physics involved in galaxy ...

Space & Earth / Astronomy

created Aug 29, 2011 | popularity 4.9 / 5 (13) | comments 45 | with audio podcast

Hitting moving RNA drug targets

By accounting for the floppy, fickle nature of RNA, researchers at the University of Michigan and the University of California, Irvine have developed a new way to search for drugs that target this important molecule. Their ...

Chemistry / Biochemistry

created Jun 26, 2011 | popularity 5 / 5 (1) | comments 0 | with audio podcast

Computer simulation

A computer simulation, a computer model or a computational model is a computer program, or network of computers, that attempts to simulate an abstract model of a particular system. Computer simulations have become a useful part of mathematical modeling of many natural systems in physics (computational physics), chemistry and biology, human systems in economics, psychology, and social science and in the process of engineering new technology, to gain insight into the operation of those systems, or to observe their behavior.

Computer simulations vary from computer programs that run a few minutes, to network-based groups of computers running for hours, to ongoing simulations that run for days. The scale of events being simulated by computer simulations has far exceeded anything possible (or perhaps even imaginable) using the traditional paper-and-pencil mathematical modeling: over 10 years ago, a desert-battle simulation, of one force invading another, involved the modeling of 66,239 tanks, trucks and other vehicles on simulated terrain around Kuwait, using multiple supercomputers in the DoD High Performance Computer Modernization Program; a 1-billion-atom model of material deformation (2002); a 2.64-million-atom model of the complex maker of protein in all organisms, a ribosome, in 2005; and the Blue Brain project at EPFL (Switzerland), began in May 2005, to create the first computer simulation of the entire human brain, right down to the molecular level.

For more information about Computer simulation, read the full article at Wikipedia.
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