#Simulations that track the formation of #smallgalaxies after the #BigBang and include, for the first time, previously neglected interactions between #gas and #darkmatter show that the galaxies created are very tiny, much brighter, and form more quickly than they do in typical simulations that don't take these interactions into account.
...and I've stumbled across so many great quotes now which could just as well have been written today and not in, like, 1970. I really feel the urge to start sharing some of them, because that groundhog-day experience I keep having is as entertaining as it is lowkey frustrating lol.😅 Also saw it's topical for some people so maybe it'd even be useful?!
"Although simulation is not new, simulated history is rare enough that historians may not be aware of its possibilities and limitations"
Lance E. Davis, 1975, "Review of 'Late Nineteenth-century American development' by Jeffrey G. Williamson, 1975" in: History and Theory 15(3), p. 330. https://doi.org/10.2307/2504732
"The use of computers will require historians to be more
precise in their thinking about the dimensions of the problem to be analyzed. Vague conceptualization and inadequately formulated
research problems are magnified by the computer.
Since the validity of computer analysis is contingent upon the competence of the user,
historians must give careful attention to systematic conceptualization of important research problems."
"Computer analysis [...] really is an extension of ideas and concepts already inherent in the historical methodology.
The computer also opens the possibilities of predictive history, certainly the most controversial aspect, but by exercising a certain amount of caution in his problems and his predictions, the historian might profitably enter the field already pioneered by the psychologist and sociologist."
Vern L. Bullough, 1967, "The Computer and the Historian: Some Tentative Beginnings" in: Computers and the Humanities, Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 61-64. https://www.jstor.org/stable/30199211
What is the connection between fractal geometry and systems at a critical point undergoing phase transition? This is one of the more useful ideas that has emerged from the study of dynamical systems, but often it's buried too deep into the study of modeling for most people to encounter it-- then it gets explained badly in pop-science books.
@forestine@flockofnazguls a very nice free ebook on things to do with the THAT analog computer. Some of this stuff is simple enough to be done on a proto or breadboard and integrate into a modular synth.