Ask HN: What's the coolest computer simulation you can think of?
This was asked 14 years ago on HN, and the responses were quite interesting. With the improving of these last years, what are the fanciest computer simulations that you know ? I work at LLNL so I work with people who make cool simulations all the time. The coolest ones I’ve seen lately were the ones that helped with last year’s big fusion ignition shot at NIF. There is a (very) recent article summarizing how simulations contributed to ignition here: https://www.llnl.gov/news/computing-codes-simulations-helped.... Just reading about how many different simulation teams were involved and how many different types of physics had to be modeled to get that shot to work is awe-inspiring, at least for me. Optimizing target thickness, modeling plasma in the target, laser coupling at the entrance hole, etc. - there are a ridiculous number of things that had to be modeled, together, at very different scales. The prior article describing how simulation contributed to the pre-ignition, 1.3 MJ shot goes into some more detail and has some cool visualizations: https://lasers.llnl.gov/news/models-and-simulations-help-map.... The one showing the target fill tube perturbing the implosion in 3D stands out to me - it shows the types of tiny things that can cause a fusion shot to go wrong. PavelDoGreat's WebGL Fluid Simulation is the first that came to my mind. Check it out on mobile too, it's amazing. https://paveldogreat.github.io/WebGL-Fluid-Simulation/ https://github.com/PavelDoGreat/WebGL-Fluid-Simulation It's been on HN a few times already: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=WebGL%20Fluid%20Simulation&typ... General answer that I've seen a lot throughout my career, simulation of blood pumps and cardiovascular medical devices, this is one popular package foe doing so: Boosting photovoltaics through simulation of photosynthesis which is a quantum mechanical process. https://chemistry.illinois.edu/news/2021-03-08/high-level-si... Earth