MONOLOGUE - 3 Computer Simulations that Changed The World (And 2 That Are on the Verge)

Computer simulations have already massively transformed our ability to study complicated situations and events. We can study the effects of disasters without having to suffer through the real thing, and we can test out solutions. Running simulated events on powerful computers, based on real-life factors, lets scientists test potential designs, predict future outcomes or get a close look at events that are difficult to observe directly.

Here are three simulations that have completely changed how we interact with the world — and two more that could change everything, in the next couple decades.

Top image: Tron Uprising.

Testing the Hydrogen Bomb

You've probably heard of ENIAC, one of the first true general-use computers in the world, a mammoth machine with over 17,000 vacuum tubes, built in 1946. What you might not know is that ENIAC's first use was to run the simulations that helped with the development of the hydrogen bomb.

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Mathematicians Stanisław Ulam and John von Neumann were testing the radiation-shielding properties of various materials. They knew most of the physical properties involved, because neutrons moved through things — but it was their development of the Monte Carlo method that allowed them to run useful simulations. Instead of setting all the variables (what's known as a deterministic algorithm), the Monte Carlo method uses random numbers, runs the simulation many times, and statistically analyzes the results. This technique laid the foundation for the entire field of computer simulation, and also led to the publication of bizarre, amazing books full of random numbers (the development of pseudorandom number generators soon made these obsolete).

Weather Forecasts

Modern weather forecasts can provide 15 to 20 minutes of warning before a major thunderstorm or tornado hits, and make reasonably accurate predictions three or more days in advance. Meteorologists accomplish this by taking enormous amounts of data and running simulations that can take all that information into account (the expertise of the meteorologist to interpret it all is a huge factor as well).

This information comes from ground observation stations, radar, and satellites. It's combined with what we know about fluid dynamics, atmospheric conditions and even chemical reactions. And the simulations are run on supercomputers owned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA's IBM-leased supercomputers run at 7.3 teraflops, or more than 70 trillion calculations per second. That lets them predict weather at a maximum resolution of five square miles. The development of more powerful computers could bring that resolution up to one square mile — which would directly improve weather forecasts and increase the warning time prior to severe storms.

The Simulation That Infected America

In 2006, a research team that included the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, and the Los Alamos National Laboratory modeled the spread of bird flu through the U.S. They used census data to create a model of population movement, vectors of infection, and levels of contagion. The simulation began when infected international travelers arrived at 14 different major U.S. airports. The result was horrifying — the red "infected zones" spread across the entire country, peaking in two months, with over half the population infected. Anyone interested in science-fictional pandemic scenarios should watch the video of the simulation below, and see how brutally fast the infection spreads.

Click to view

There's some good news, though. That simulation was run with zero intervention. When they ran it again, factoring in the use of a vaccine (even a quickly developed one that was not particularly effective against that flu strain), the infection was slowed and the rate of infection peaked at a much lower level. So they proved that even half-assed intervention could do a lot of good.

The Human Brain Simulation

Henry Markram wants to build a human brain out of a computer — or an "in silico brain," as he puts it. Markram works with the Blue Brain Project (named for IBM's Blue supercomputers), striving toward a computer powerful enough to simulate the 100 trillion or so synapses that make a human brain work.

But instead of constructing a literal replica of a brain using processors instead of neurons, Markram intends to use the genetic rules for brain construction as a basis. That's the only way to break down the complexity of the problem into something even remotely manageable by the computers of the near future. Even so, this task will require the development of incredibly powerful, exaflop computers in the next 10 to 20 years, and the project will still be incredibly daunting (and Markram has his skeptics). Still, the benefits would be astounding –- the ability to study brain diseases and injuries, to test how genetic changes affect brain development and activity, to understand how drugs affect the brain, and to develop new ones would be a boon to medicine as great, perhaps, as the development of germ theory.

The Simulation of Everything

The Living Earth Simulator is the ultimate expression of determinism, a computing project that aims to take in all the data in the world, run simulations that account for everything, and tell us how things will turn out in the future.

Let me make that extra clear: All the data. Simulations of everything. Predict the future. It sounds like a short story plot from the Golden Age of Science-Fiction, but physicist Dirk Helbing thinks a billion-Euro computer can pull it off. If he's right (and there are a lot of reasons he might not be), then this computer will be able to figure out not just weather patterns, but how those patterns will affect economies, how economic changes will affect ecological systems, how human movements will be affected, how those changes will in turn lead to other changes, and so on. Is it insanely complex? Yes. Do we have fully functional theories to predict all the various interrelating systems this project would be dealing with? No. Is the world far too unpredictable for any broad-scope simulation to accommodate? Yes. But it's still awesome that there are scientists who want to give it a try. Even if they fail, they will likely produce incredible advances in computer technology and the mathematics of modeling and running simulations.

Sources:

Carlson, Emily. "Computer Model Examines Strategies to Mitigate Potential U.S. Flu Pandemic." National Institute of General Medical Sciences, April 3, 2006.

Lubchenco, Jane and Hayes, Jack. "A Better Eye on the Storm." Scientific American, May 2012.

Markram, Henry. "The Human Brain Project." Scientific American, June 2012.

Weinberger, David. "The Machine That Would Predict the Future." Scientific American, Dec. 2011.

Photos: NASA, NOAA, PNAS, Arthur W. Toga/Laboratory of Neuro Imaging and Randy Buckner/Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging.

HIGGS BOSON DISCOVERY

What Today's Higgs Boson Discovery Really Means

By Alasdair Wilkins

Earlier today, scientists from the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider announced the discovery of a subatomic particle that's consistent with the Higgs Boson. So, have physicists finally found the elusive particle? Short answer? Yes. Longer answer? Well...

If you were to say July 4, 2012 was the day the Higgs boson was officially discovered, you wouldn't really be wrong. As CERN Director General Rolf Heuer put it, "As a layman, I think we have it." That's about as unequivocal a statement as you're likely to get from CERN, which is understandably conservative when it comes to announcing possible physics-shattering discoveries. But then, there's a second half to Heuer's quote, one that probably won't get as much attention: "But as a scientist, I have to say, 'What do we have?'" That's a huge question, one that won't be answered today, maybe not this year. Today's announcement is just the beginning of the Higgs story, definitely not the end.

So what, exactly, did we discover?

Rolf Heuer offered as good a summation as any when he said, "We have observed a new particle that is consistent with a Higgs boson." Certainly, the two sets of independent experiments have a tentatively confirmed discovery of a new subatomic particle, and it's in the correct mass range and is the right type of particle to be the Higgs. That's a huge deal in and of itself — this is the first new elementary particle discovered since the top quark in 1995. But we can't say just yet that what CERN has discovered is definitely the Higgs boson, let alone the one predicted by the Standard Model.

So then, here's what we know. The CMS experiment detected a particle at 125.3±0.6 gigaelectronvolts, meaning its mass is about 133 times that of a proton. The ATLAS experiment, which works independently of CMS, has found a particle at 126.5±0.6 GeV. Depending on how you combine the data, both experiments are hovering right around a five-sigma level of certainty.

This means both teams are about 99.9999% that the signals they have detected really do belong to a new particle, as opposed to being random statistical noise. Five-sigma is the accepted threshold for a discovery, and the fact that both experiments are at five-sigma — or 4.9-sigma, depending on the exact data, but the figure is only expected to climb as the team analyzes more data — means we can be very confident that a new particle has indeed been discovered.

But is this the Higgs boson?

The honest answer is: We don't know yet. We know that the particle in question is a boson, one of the two fundamental classes of elementary particles and the type generally associated with carrying force. We know this, because of the newly discovered particle's diphotonic decay — simply meaning that it decays into a pair of photons, which is something only bosons do. And of course, the mass range of 125-126 GeV is in line with what we expected for the Higgs boson — after all, that's why ATLAS and CMS were looking there in the first place. That, as CMS spokesperson Joe Incandela pointed out today, makes this particle the heaviest boson ever found.

But the Higgs should have a bunch of unique properties that have yet to be confirmed. The most important of these is that its spin value is 0, unlike any known particle. We don't yet know the spin of this new particle. If it's 0, then that goes a long way to confirming that this is indeed the Higgs. If its spin is some other value, then there's a near endless supply of other hypothetical particles it could be. The odds are probably still pretty good that we're looking at the Higgs here, but it certainly can't be taken for granted.

But if this is the Higgs, then it completes the Standard Model, right?

Not necessarily. The thing is, just because this is a Higgs doesn't mean that this isthe Higgs, the one that fills in the missing blank in the Standard Model. ("Completes" is really too strong a word, as our own Dr. Dave Goldberg explained at the end of his post yesterday.) But that's not the only kind of possible Higgs — depending on how this new particle behaves, it might point to more exotic physics that go beyond what's predicted by the Standard Model. That's an exciting possibility, as it might mean the Higgs can the door up for supersymmetry, or perhaps improve our understanding of the mysterious dark matter and even more mysterious dark energy that make up 96% of the universe.

The particle's decay paths, or the way in which the boson decays into other particles in the Large Hadron Collider, should clarify whether this particle actually fits the Standard Model as we currently know it. As ATLAS team member Dr. Pippa Wells told BBC News, several of the observed decay paths already show apparent departures from what would be expected. These could well just be statistical flukes that will get ironed out with the addition of more data, but they might also point to something significant.

So just what are we left with? Well, we almost certainly have ourselves a new elementary particle, the first such particle found in nearly twenty years. All the data announced today is still preliminary - the first formal analyses of the CMS and ATLAS data should start rolling out towards the end of the month.

And the Large Hadron Collider is still set to run through the end of the year, meaning there's still many months more of data still left to be gathered. All that should help confirm once and for all whether what was announced today is reallythe Higgs boson, and whether it's really the Higgs boson predicted by the Standard Model. This is unquestionably a massive breakthrough in our understanding of physics — but there's every reason to think today's announcement will be dwarfed by all the breakthroughs still to come.

FORBIDDEN ZONE - EAST GATE 47

THE UNIVERSE IN G MINOR

Monsters, fairies, evil overlords and an entire host of other fantastic creatures people the digital art of American Kienan Lafferty. Kienan Lafferty is a 2D Production Artist over at Riot Games, and the influence of RPG and fantasy quest imagery is more than apparent in his work. The characters could actually be game characters, comic book characters, or even stars in their very own cartoon series. Aside from games, Lafferty has also worked as the designated illustrator of two books,Humbug, A Christmas Carol and Beau and the Beanstalk. He’s also created 2D assets for movies and commercials and is a regular fixture in the features run by Blizzard.com, Newgrounds and DeviantArt. Not without just cause, we think, since his characters are at once whimsical and realistic enough to seem like they’re about to leap out at you from your very own PC screen.

Source: DeviantArt.com

IS PROMETHEUS ANTI-SCIENCE ?

Prometheus follows a pack of scientists on an expedition to a remote planet to discover the meaning of life — and then horrible, terrible, unspeakable things befall the crew. In a sense, they are punished for their curiosity.

Does that make Prometheus anti-science? We had a spoiler-free discussion withPrometheus screenwriter Damon Lindelof to discuss — as he calls it — "Frankenstein 101" and the relationship the film has with science and religion.

What piece of the Alien saga, what strand in that fabric, did you most want to weave into Prometheus but couldn't?

Damon Lindelof: I think that the only fair answer to that question is, "We got all the fabric in there." It wasn't me walking into Ridley's office and saying, "Hi, my name is Damon. I'm a huge fan, and I would like to write an Alien movie and you should direct it." It was the exact opposite, which was Ridley already had already gone down the road developing this thing for some time. I think Jon Spaihts wrote a great script, but it was very dyed in the wool "Alien Prequel." I was basically called in to take the ball into the end zone, for lack of a better sports metaphor.

It was really, for me, about doing what Ridley wanted to do. We were completely in tune from the word "go." I was really interested in the theme of creation as it related to the Alien universe. The idea that he invented an organism that actually needed to gestate inside a human being in order to become the perfect killing machine. I sort of always wondered, "Where did that thing come from? It's not really a practical organism if it needs a human to gestate. Was it invented by someone?" The fact that that was precisely the story that Ridley wanted to tell felt like harmonic convergence, and we just sort of ran with it.

Did you think of this movie as a horror movie while you were writing it? The reason Lost was so great is because it was a scifi show that didn't feel like a scifi show. It was genre-busting. Did you think Prometheus is horror?

That's a really insightful question because I do feel like the original Alien is very much a horror movie in space. It sort of conforms to those fundamental laws. But then there are these scifi elements to the original Alien. There's a robot in it, there are spaceships in it. There's space travel, hypersleep, and a computer that essentially runs the ship.

But is it horror, scifi, or something new? And I do think that the idea thatPrometheus is, in my opinion, a scifi movie first and foremost. It's hard scifi. Perhaps mixed into that all great scifi — whether Prometheus is great is for everyone to judge — but is based on some sort of philosophical question that we have about the human experience and an exploration of that though scientific means.

That to me was the jumping off point for Prometheus. Then along the way there are certain questions that we as humans should not be asking. When we get too close to the answers, we suffer severe consequences. That's "Frankenstein 101." That was the story that Ridley wanted to tell, and the story that I felt was really cool.

So yes, once those consequences begin to manifest themselves you're back into that horror realm. Hopefully the movie is dancing between those two things and you're also bringing in some fundamental action as well as the Alien sequel did. I think people like to see that too. Get your heart pounding, it is summer after all. Ultimately Prometheus is all those things at the same time. At least that was our intent.

You mentioned earlier that there are some questions we're not supposed to ask. IsPrometheus anti-science then, is that one of the messages?

It's definitely not anti-science. In fact, if anything I think it's pro-science because it advances the idea that part of our own programming as human beings, we're many ways just as governed by our programming as David is. We have to seek out the answers to these questions, even though we know we'll never get satisfying answers. We're curious about what happens as we die. We need to know where we come from. What the meaning of life is. What kind of life we're supposed to lead. These are all sort of nonscientific, philosophical, religious, and spiritual questions. But the idea that we can find some comfort in science, that science can sort of give us a path to follow in understanding our roots. I think we're better off from understanding that we're descended from apes than we are looking at some book that was written 2000 years ago that gives us an explanation for our own roots.

I'm most definitively pro-science, but I think that the movie advances the idea that, "Can the two live along side each other?" Is it possible to be a scientist and maintain some faith in the unknown? And are you rewarded for having blind faith? And I do think the movie makes the meta-commentary on these issues. [Editor's Note: Tune into our follow-up interview to find out how exactly!]

BATTLE BETWEEN LIGHT AND DARKNESS

Let us dare to step into a parallel, magical universe, through the incredible paintings produced by Polish painter Tomasz Alen Kopera. Though born in Poland, and with a style reminiscent of that of co-national Tomek Setowski, Kopera now resides in Ireland. It is there that he creates his basic oil and acrylic on canvas paintings, through themes, symbols and elements borrowed from the artistic lingo of magical realism. He takes his inspiration from “human nature and the mysteries of the Universe,” and there is plenty of dynamic tension between the mystery of darkness and the magic of light in his work. According to the official biography on his website, “each painting motivates thought, challenging our initial response. Sometimes darkness will prevail, at other times, light. He is celebrated in visionary art circles for his acute attention to detail, mastery of color and bold use of subject matter.”

Source: AlenKopera.com

AMERICA'S DANGEROUS GAME