Wow! Astronomers Explode a Virtual Star – Space.com: For years astronomers have tried in vain to blow up an Earth-size star using strings of computer code. Finally, mission accomplished. And the resulting 3-D simulation has revealed the step-by-step process that fuels such an explosion.
Prior attempts to produce the simulated explosion required scientists manually tell the computer model to detonate the star, which meant the model was not quite right or it would have generated its own cataclysm. With more tweaking of models, University of Chicago scientists generated natural detonations of white dwarf stars in simplified, two-dimensional simulations.
“There were claims made that it wouldn’t work in 3-D,” said Don Lamb, director of the University of Chicago’s Center for Astrophysical Thermonuclear Flashes. With some extreme computing, the team produced a 3-D detonation.
The simulation confirmed what the team already suspected from previous tests: The stars detonate in a supersonic process resembling diesel-engine combustion.
The computer simulation took a total of 58,000 hours and more than 700 computer processors, the actual process from start to finish—when the star explodes—played out in just three seconds.
The article also includes two videos of the simulation:
Video 1
Video 2
There was too much symmetry. Also, I don’t think an exploding star would pop out at one location on its surface. Judging by supernova and other stellar events previously observed, it’s more likely the star would explode in all directions. OTOH, Eta Carinae looks fairly lobed and symmetrical.
Hmm, interesting…
Perhaps we’re too primitive to work on distant stellar phenomena. Instead, why don’t these people put their brains and all the computing power towards solving some of Earth’s REAL problems?
Oh, the the Woot-off’s still going…
Off topic. Wish I could get my Firefox browser to play the videos. Latest browser (updated yesterday) and flash, shockwave, quicktime plug ins, but no dice. Any help appreciated. Thanks.
On topic. Great advance in understanding stellar evolution. Well worth the 70 hours of computer time to produce the final result, IMHO.
More Gee Whiz “science.” It’s not disprovable or verifiable. Maybe if they had other teams trying the same thing without knowing at all what this team did — and came to the same algorithms, maybe. It’s just a pretty picture otherwise.
Simulation is for wimps! When are they going to try it for real?
BubbaRay – if you’re using the Firefox plug-in called NoScript (sometimes AdBlocker) or other such add-ons, they’ll block some of the code for videos. You just have to tell the plug-in to “Allow…” from some of the sites, and their affiliates, that you’re trying to look at.
5, Thanks for the help. I’ve even ditched my hosts file, to no avail. I guess I can just forget about space.com videos.