"Taking issue with the perception that computer models lack realism, a Sandia National Laboratories researcher told his audience that simulations of the nanoscale provide researchers more detailed results — not less — than experiments alone."

http://www.sandia.gov/news/resources/releases/2006/nanosimulation.html

maybe more people can be swayed to run rosetta now ;)

-gregor

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It is a general turning point in science and technology that is jut now happening, I think. In engineering a method called "Model-Based Design" is just becoming the state-of-the-art way of developing systems, especially in the semiconductor sector.

It is based on simulations of system models and enables engineers to design a system without applying any hardware until a very late stage in the design process and thus does not only make that process a lot faster but also cheaper and more reliable.

Every once and again a paradigm change like this one takes place. I remember a chemist, a director of a Max Planck institute, giving a lecture on minimum potential surfaces and their importance for understanding catalytic activities (almost exactly 20 years ago, I was the lab assistant showing the slides). Another professor stood up and rightout denied that this was still chemistry and that it also was overdoing the model. He was of course wrong and many such calculations are done today. Modern chemistry has gone from experimenting to modeling a lot in just those areas at the frontier of research. These models do not only help understand known processes but also lead to the prediction of totally new ways (what a surprise, regarding all that can be read on the Rosetta home page).

This is only natural, as, like Pythagoras mentioned, "everything is number". The more I think about that statement the more I am convinced that he did exactly know what he was saying with it. It is just that mathematics and computational methods have now advanced to a point to prove that in all depth. In my opinion what is going on today will revolutionize the world as much as quantum mechanics and relativity did.

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"I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant." R.M. Nixon