Re:Google and a nuclear fusion company have developed a new ...
by scoofy on Wednesday July 26, 2017 @06:33PM
(#14860995)
Agreed. My background is philosophy, and while i rarely get into the STEM arguments. This has everything to do with inductive learning vs deductive learning. Any simulation will be run with the premises already built in, but cutting edge science is always about learning what those premises are. If we knew what they were, it'd be trivial to set up the reactor. Here we need inductive experimentation to learn how to simulate it trivially.
Re:Google and a nuclear fusion company have developed a new ...
by adrianN on Thursday July 27, 2017 @06:38AM
(#14864058)
If you're doing science, experiments are hugely important. If you're doing engineering and you're reasonably sure that the physics guys came up with a good model, having everything in a computer would make development a lot cheaper.
Re:Google and a nuclear fusion company have developed a new ...
by fsloth on Thursday July 27, 2017 @02:22AM
(#14863061)
Thanks, this is the best HN 'rant for the common sense' in a long time :)
Re:Google and a nuclear fusion company have developed a new ...
by amelius on Wednesday July 26, 2017 @06:38PM
(#14861026)
I believe this is more about solving an engineering/mathematics problem, than about fundamental physics and the scientific process.
Re:Google and a nuclear fusion company have developed a new ...
by Retric on Wednesday July 26, 2017 @10:12PM
(#14862147)
Physics is a lot more than just fundamental physics. H-Bomb designs for example get hundreds of hours of super computer time to simulate a few pounds of stuff for 1/1,000th of a second and even then they are approximations which need to be validated.
Those are the reasons why string-theorist will not (and should not) get any Nobel price in the next decades. Since its predictions are hard to measure on those small scales there's no way of telling if the model is any good until it is compared against suitable experimental data.
[1] https://aeon.co/essays/how-economists-rode-maths-to-become-o...