“Virtual Universe” Created

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“Virtual universe” created, according to BBC News, ScienceNOW and ScienceDaily 7 May 2014. An international team of scientists has created “the first realistic virtual universe” that simulates 13 billion years of cosmic evolution in a 350 light year cubic space, beginning “a mere 12 million years after the Big Bang”. The scientists used a computer simulation named Illustris which, after running for 3 months on 8,000 CPUs running in parallel produced a virtual universe containing 41,416 galaxies. According to ScienceDaily, “Illustris yielded a realistic mix of spiral galaxies like the Milky Way and football-shaped elliptical galaxies. It also recreated large-scale structures like galaxy clusters and the bubbles and voids of the cosmic web. On the small scale, it accurately recreated the chemistries of individual galaxies”. According to ScienceNOW, “The findings once again neatly confirm cosmologists' standard theory of the basic ingredients of the universe and how it evolved—a result that may disappoint researchers hoping for new puzzles to solve”.

However, some cosmologists are cautious about the results. Joel Primack, a cosmologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, claims it has been oversold, and Robin Catchpole of the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge commented: “one must not be taken in by the sheer visual beauty of the thing. You get things that look like galaxies without them being much to do with the physics of how galaxies emerged”.

BBC, ScienceNOW, ScienceDaily

Editorial Comment: Skipped over in most of the reports is the fact that the only way they could get the simulation to work in the first place was to assume the existence of dark matter, which has never been detected, yet they put it in anyway because otherwise the simulation doesn't work. Notice also, the simulation did not start at the very beginning. They started with a 12 million year old universe already filled with matter and energy. Therefore, they cannot claim re the big bang scenario, that the computer generation “neatly confirms cosmologists’ standard theory of the basic ingredients of the universe and how it evolved”. To really simulate the standard theory of how the universe arrived they should have started from nothing, and evolved firstly space, matter and energy, which then big banged itself into galaxies etc. However, it seems they are smart enough to know that if humans start with nothing we get nothing.

However Catchpole and others are correct – this computer simulation is spectacular, but it is only a simulation, i.e. a pretend universe, not the real thing. It is very important to remember that though the simulation came up with a resemblance to the present day universe, it does not mean it actually happened that way. Furthermore, it only happened because a lot of very intelligent people, using some very cleverly designed machines, applied their intelligence to design a computer program with instructions to ‘evolve’ for ‘3 months’ to achieve their end. What they have established is that even cheat-starting, the only way to get a universe is for a pre-existing intelligence to program it into existence, just as the real Creator of the universe did. However, he did not need a computer and he did not need the millions of years, and since the evolutionary scientists achieved their aims only after 3 months, it seems not even evolutionists need their beloved vast time spans.

We just have to add that if the creative programmers were as clever as the original Creator God, they could have achieved the same result in just one week. As the psalmist reminds us: “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth”. (Psalm 33:6) (Ref. cosmology, astronomy, computing, design)

Evidence News, vol. 14, No. 8
21 May 2014
Creation Research Australia