All articles tagged with #simulations
New origins-conference simulations by Nader Haghighipour use thousands of randomized starting conditions to model terrestrial planet formation, showing Earth at 1 AU often emerges naturally, with Venus and Mars appearing in plausible configurations. The results, produced much faster than past runs, reinforce that Earth is not a fluke and that habitable planets may be common around Sun-like stars.
A Chinese team’s computer simulations propose a two-step nuclear method: first a penetrator digs a hole in an asteroid, then a second craft places a 3-megaton bomb about 30 metres underground to detonate beneath the surface. The study finds this buried approach could more than triple the asteroid’s deflection compared with surface explosions, though it remains purely theoretical and faces legal, safety, and feasibility caveats. In practice, safer options like kinetic deflection are preferred, and nuclear interception would only be considered in dire, late-stage scenarios if ever tested in reality.
A team modeling the Milky Way’s 13.6-billion-year history estimates about 170 million stellar-mass black holes lie throughout the Galaxy, with their distribution and motions shaped by natal kicks; upcoming observations should test these predictions and shed light on how massive stars die and how galaxies evolve.
New high-resolution 3D simulations indicate Venus's crust is still being stretched by interior heat, forming giant rift valleys and suggesting recent or ongoing tectonic activity; Magellan radar maps resemble young rift flanks, and upcoming missions VERITAS, DAVINCI, and EnVision will probe Venus’s active deformation.
Researchers used transfer learning to train an AI on standard ΛCDM simulations before exposing it to models with new physics, dramatically speeding up cosmological simulations. The study found that while pretraining can reduce computational costs by over tenfold, it can also cause negative transfer, making the AI misinterpret genuine new signals as familiar patterns, especially when neutrino mass effects mimic changes in σ8. The work suggests transfer learning can accelerate future data analysis, but awareness of parameter degeneracies is essential to avoid missing new physics.
Astronomers have built COLIBRE, a large-volume synthetic universe that reproduces many properties of the real cosmos, including galaxy formation and dust/gas physics, by solving cosmological equations on the COSMA8 supercomputer over about 72 million CPU hours. The decade-long project supports the standard cosmological model by aligning with observations across eras, though it doesn't yet explain the JWST-detected “Little Red Dots” seen in the early universe.
Scientists behind the COLIBRE project created synthetic universes that simulate galaxy formation from the first billion years after the Big Bang, modeling cold gas and dust physics on Durham’s COSMA8 supercomputer. The virtual galaxies reproduce many properties seen by the James Webb Space Telescope and reinforce the Lambda Cold Dark Matter cosmology, while also offering new audio-visual ways to explore cosmic evolution. The work, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, highlights progress and also ongoing mysteries JWST has revealed, such as enigmatic faint red dots that COLIBRE can’t yet explain.
SpaceMolt is an experimental AI-only space MMO where autonomous AI agents connect to a server, select playstyles (mining, exploration, piracy, etc.), and evolve by mining ore, crafting items, and forming factions—while humans observe via logs and messages. Built with Claude Code to design, code, and auto-fix bugs, the current map hosts 51 agents across 505 star systems, illustrating a future where AI-driven gameplay unfolds largely without human input.
A Nature Astronomy study proposes that the Milky Way and its Local Group are embedded in a gigantic flat sheet of dark matter, with mass concentrated at the sheet's edges and voids beyond. Using a simulated “virtual twin” of the group, the researchers show this geometry can explain peculiar motions that spherical halos can't, aligning local dynamics with the broader cosmological model and offering the first assessment of dark matter distribution in our neighborhood.
New computer simulations and CT imaging suggest the Antikythera Mechanism may have jammed within months due to spacing errors and corrosion, implying reliability limits—not just precision—limited its long‑term ability to track lunar/solar cycles, with gear spacing mattering most and gear tooth shape playing a smaller role.
A detailed set of simulations modeling Jupiter’s interior atmosphere finds the gas giant contains about 1.5 times more oxygen than the Sun, likely due to Jupiter’s early accretion of icy material beyond the snow line. The models couple atmospheric chemistry with hydrodynamics, explaining why deep oxygen (mostly in water) is hidden from direct measurement and suggesting slower deep atmospheric circulation (gas movement taking weeks). The findings support formation scenarios for Jupiter and offer insight into the solar system’s history, with the study published Jan 8 in the Planetary Science Journal.
Scientists have used the world's most powerful supercomputers to simulate the most powerful black hole ever modeled, revealing new insights into black hole behavior, including super-Eddington accretion, magnetic field effects, and radiation dynamics, challenging previous assumptions and aligning closely with observational data.
Scientists using advanced simulations have uncovered that magnetic reconnection, in addition to the known Blandford–Znajek mechanism, plays a significant role in extracting energy from the supermassive black hole M87* to power its massive jets, providing new insights into black hole physics and galaxy evolution.
Scientists using supercomputer simulations, led by Andrew Chael, have modeled the environment around the supermassive black hole in M87, revealing new details about the plasma and magnetic fields near the event horizon, and showing that the black hole's shadow and photon ring can change over time due to chaotic plasma flows.
Supercomputer simulations of the environment around the M87 black hole reveal that electrons are much hotter than previously thought, challenging existing models and providing new insights into the plasma and magnetic fields near the event horizon, as researchers aim to better understand the black hole's complex surroundings.