The Universe in a Box
Simulations and the Quest to Code the Cosmos
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5.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
Scientists are using simulations to recreate the universe, revealing the hidden nature of reality.
Cosmology is a tricky science—no one can make their own stars, planets, or galaxies to test its theories. But over the last few decades a new kind of physics has emerged to fill the gap between theory and experimentation. Harnessing the power of modern supercomputers, cosmologists have built simulations that offer profound insights into the deep history of our universe, allowing centuries-old ideas to be tested for the first time. Today, physicists are translating their ideas and equations into code, finding that there is just as much to be learned from computers as experiments in laboratories.
In The Universe in a Box, cosmologist Andrew Pontzen explains how physicists model the universe’s most exotic phenomena, from black holes and colliding galaxies to dark matter and quantum entanglement, enabling them to study the evolution of virtual worlds and to shed new light on our reality.
But simulations don’t just allow experimentation with the cosmos; they are also essential to myriad disciplines like weather forecasting, epidemiology, neuroscience, financial planning, airplane design, and special effects for summer blockbusters. Crafting these simulations involves tough compromises and expert knowledge. Simulation is itself a whole new branch of science, one that we are only just beginning to appreciate and understand. The story of simulations is the thrilling history of how we arrived at our current knowledge of the world around us, and it provides a sneak peek at what we may discover next.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Cosmologist Pontzen debuts with an exciting if digressive account of how astronomers use computer simulations to study the universe. "We build computer simulations based on the laws of nature—gravity, particle physics, light, radiation, and more—in order to obtain predictions that can be tested against the night-sky observations," Pontzen explains, describing how computer simulations tackle such confounding questions as how stars form and how fast the universe is expanding. Tracing the history of scientific simulations, he begins in the 1970s when digital computers became sufficiently powerful to calculate the gravitational pull of dark matter and continues through the '80s and '90s, when simulations showed that neutrinos (subatomic particles believed to make up dark matter) were likely much lighter than initially thought. Pontzen excels at translating quantum physics and other difficult concepts into lay-friendly terms, but reader mileage will vary on the lengthy digressions about Bayesian probability, machine learning, and the relatively obscure "it-from-qubit hypothesis" (a variation on the idea that we all live in a simulation). Still, this look at the cutting edge of astronomy fascinates.
