model of the cosmos Thread

Edit: Sorry this was for the Infinity: Quest for Earth forum, i believe i posted in the wrong area =X

Hi, me and my father are really into stars and the cosmos, and we have a dream! I've seen how IA has been able to make a procedurally generated galaxy and has some weather effects in place for his seamless virtual cosmos. Ultimately there are a lot of factors in this game... A LOT. Its impressive to see how someone colaberate so many different forces into one seamless engine... So we were wondering how difficult it would be to make an actual scientific cosmic model bringing many smaller models together. Models like Oceanic, Geologic and Atmospheric, tieing it together with something like a galaxy model, preferrably multiple galaxies.

The task would be utterly monumental (imagine accumulating all the data needed... you would need several of the worlds largest data gathering branches to give their info to YOU... or US), but the benifits would be profound! We imagine a model with everything tied together, seamlessly, with all the data you could imagine being put into actual calculations. Not just things like salinity in water, or heavy elements in the sky, but the energy put out by the sun, or reflected by the moon, and how it would effect things here on earth.

Theres already a sun model, not perfected or anything but the data is being gathered, whos to say you couldn't use that data (if allowed) to match up data gathered from say; a supernova or jupiters magnetism, and try and figure out how its all relevant?

Or even smaller bits of data, like nuclear explosions and their true effect on the earths atmosphere. Imagine a model so complex, you could simulate what were to happen if a nuke went off and you were able to see it from space in all forms of visibility. How the radiation dispersed or how the ozone was effect or if the moon or the sun had any effect on that explosion (i.e. the differences between nighttime nukes and daytime). Imagine if you could scale this model back to the 50s and see exactly what humans might have done to the atmosphere and earth's background radiation level during that time period. Human activity would be a definite factor in this model, if it were to be as accurate as me and my father dream of it being.

This model would not be for earth only obviously, you would have to be able to look at any planet in our solar system, and with all the data gathered for that day (on everything) collaberated. Figure out how our position in the galaxy is effecting our solar system. Or even calculate all the accumulated force earth has received from every supernova witnessed in our past, and how it has effected us. The data is there! Who will try and put it all together?

I would love to take up the task... our only problem is where to begin? Honestly this is the best/most hopful place I think I could bring up this idea(might get burned for that), and if someone else has already brought it up... im not suprised!

I just want to know: Is there something going on right now in terms of making a "cosmic weather/history model"? If so I would love to know/sign up for the project and help in any way possible. If it were as accurate as I would hope for, I would imagine it would be a tool too powerfull to be trusted to the public... im no nay sayer, I just doubt such a wealth of knowledge would ever be allowed to just anyone. Imagine if you could open up your model and have some idea as to where a good place to live would be in the next 25 years, based off of all the factors given in the model. It would be profound! This is something I honestly can only dream of right now, if its on the way and being done... holy crap... if not... next... 10...20 years? either way, we think it should be done.

Edited by: wimlore

i really dont know how to help you, or where you could begin, but it is an awe-inspiring dream, dont let anyone here talk you out of it.

I wish you the very best of luck because it sounds amazing.

There is a project running that does try to accumulate, and moreover, process all data giving by other simulations such as the "earth simulator". (Which by the way already incorporates data from thousands of weather stations)
But we are talking about trillions of terabyte, might be exaggerated due to dramatic effect, here. So far all they can do is try to store it. Other then that its a great vision for the future i have to admit. But its more then complex.

Rather than be outright negative, I'll merely point out there's a reason weather simulations run on big expensive supercomputers (and even then are quite clearly far from perfect). This is easily as complex (and probably worse, given the glalactic rather than global scale of it all).

Ah btw if you want to help you might want to google the boinc project. Its a form of shared computing, meaning you install a little program and you get tasks from a server which your computer will simulate and send the results back. There are projects for cell mutation, astronomy, supernova and pretty much everything science needs.

BOINC is great for scientific number crunching, not so useful for simulating stuff real-time in a game.

wimlore wrote: I just want to know: Is there something going on right now in terms of
making a "cosmic weather/history model"? If so I would love to
know/sign up for the project and help in any way possible.

BOINC comes closest to it :o