A materials scientist from Sandia National Laboratories argues that nanoscale computer simulations can actually provide more detailed info than "real" experiments. Researcher Eliot Fang told an audience at a scientific conference that Sandia's latest simulations involving billions of atoms revealed insights they couldn't have gotten any other way. From Sandia:
(Researcher Eliot) Fang derided the pejorative "garbage in, garbage out" description of computer modeling – the belief that inputs for computer simulations are so generic that outcomes fail to generate the unexpected details found only by actual experiment.
Fang not only denied this truism but reversed it. "There's another, prettier world beyond what the SEM [scanning electron microscope] shows, and it's called simulation," he told his audience. "When you look through a microscope, you don't see some things that modeling and simulation show."
This change in the position of simulations in science – from weak sister to an ace card – is a natural outcome of improvements in computing, Fang says. "Fifteen years ago, the Cray YMP [supercomputer] was the crown jewel; it's now equivalent to a PDA we have in our pocket."
