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Yes supercomputer time is scarce and expensive. Physical laboratory time, materials, and workers are also scarce and expensive. And physical lab tests can con
by toss1 1y ago
Yes supercomputer time is scarce and expensive.
Physical laboratory time, materials, and workers are also scarce and expensive. And physical lab tests can consume a lot of calendar time.
So, even with the constraints and costs, using the supercomputer to run 1,000 or 10,000 tests and then physical lab tests on only the few most promising results can still less costly in both funds and especially calendar time than the costs and time to run a similar number of physical lab tests to produce the results.
It is literally a balancing of the scarcity and costs of each mode of getting to the results, and those experts in the field, with their own labs, are making the claim that this is the way their research should proceed. Do you have actual information and specific knowledge that in fact proves them wrong (b/c that comment seems a lot more hand-wavey vs theirs)?
- lazide 1y agoOnly if the simulations are usefully predictive. A lot of the physical lab tests end up showing effects we did not know exist, which is why they are interesting - simulations are historically terrible at predicting things we don’t know can exist. See the pharma adventures in simulating potential drugs in the 90’s-early 2000’s. A lot of heat a noise for little actual effect.
- toss1 1y ago>>Only if the simulations are usefully predictive. Of course; if you cannot make your simulations produce realistic output you are either wasting your time or are clearly not yet done building your simulations. >> A lot of the physical lab tests end up showing effects we did not know exist, which is why they are interesting - simulations are historically terrible at predicting things we don’t know can exist. Of course, there are the lab surprises, discovery of penicillin an early famous one. I'm absolutely not saying supercomputing simulation should replace lab work — In my own shop I do lab testing well beyond where most would go to simulation, precisely because there's no substitute for seeing the physical side-effects. But when someone randomly claims the team publishing very useful work is somehow wrong to use simulation, I think the real researchers in their lab & at their terminals know better than that post.
- lazide 1y agoI guess my point was less if the simulations produce realistic output, and more if they can be used to discover or model novel - but real - phenomena. The closer we get to ‘the truth’ (if such a thing exists!), the more likely this is of course. Ideally we’d have simulations that we could even discover novel physics behaviors in that match real life! Practically, most are simplified to the point that we can match behavior we already well understand, and maybe a few things can validate we don’t - which can help explore some of the gaps we haven’t been able to touch in the labs. it’s not likely we’ll discover new principles that way though. But I’m guessing I’m just preaching to the choir, eh?
- toss1 1y agoYup, seems exactly right. And I think we might be nearly to the stage you're identifying, where there is enough fidelity in the models to discover new things. I sort of recall reading at least some of that happening in some fields of math?