At http://phys.org/print353228554.html …. French researchers have created a computer model that is meant to explain the massive heat in the Sun's corona. Apparently, solar physicists have been perplexed by why the corona is millions of degress hotter than the Sun's actual surface. So, the idea of the model is to simulate how that might occur. It involves a magnetic field on the surface of the Sun and Alfven waves generated inside the chromosphere, etc. I like the way it coolly claims, in the abstract, that 'a fully consistent model has not yet been constructed, and debate continues ….'. Somebody is not getting their message across. Perhaps they need to do a bit of modelling.
At www.space.com/29641-multiverses-big-errors-astrophysics.html …. concerns a talk at the World Science Festival in New York in which Mario Livio discussed the idea of multiverses (an infinite number of universes on different dimensions).
At http://phys.org/print352392716.html …. craters on the surface of the Moon are being blamed on comet collisions – again, using computer models. Comets have a gaseous atmosphere known as the coma and when small comets slam into the Moon the coma may scour away loose soil from the surface, producing those bright lunar swirls that have intrigued scientists since the 1970s.
Meanwhile, over at http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/06/07/an-it-experts-view-on-computer-mod… … where an IT man claims computer modelling is a projection of the model maker's own theories and computers are not able to produce anything original by their own volition. They are the sum of the information fed into them. Hence, such models (and he is primarily aiming the pistol at climate models) are not true reflections on the future but they are a means by which the model makers can expand on and show their own theory and train of thought – how it might work out. The fact that many members of the general public, and the media luvvies, seem to treat climate models as fact rather than fiction tells us more about them than it does about the science.
This is an interesting idea and although not new, and expressed frequently by detractors, it is worth noting once again. The scientist that produced the model linking lunar swirls with cratering had got the idea from watching videos of the Apollo Moon landings, where gas from the engines of the modules disturbed the dust on the surface of the Moon. He then produced a model projecting what would happen if gases from the coma of a small comet did the same thing – and hey presto, was able to prove his point by a computer simulation – or did he? Could those swirls, and craters, be produced by something other than small comets, as has been claimed in the past. He has a model that shows what might have happened – not what did and does happen. The same must be true of climate models. They should essentially be viewed as extensions of the thinking of the modellers as they decide what data is included in each of the models. They are likewise a projection forwards of a warming tendency in the 1990s and early 2000s and the idea this warming was cyclic and goes on all the time is not an important part of the modelling data, and is generally downplayed as a factor. Now that the cycle has began to cool once again their models cannot cope with what has been called a pause – but is really on the dip (hence the franctic attempts to juggle the numbers). The models had not included the possibility that climate warms and it cools – on a regularly recurring cycle. Why that should be so is something only climate scientists can tell you as climate scientist Hubert Lamb of UEA was thinking in terms of cooling and warming many years before the alarmism began. In addition, the models are all based on the assumption that increasing levels of co2 will cause warming – when this is really an untested hypothesis. It was a convenient means to explain the hot temperatures on Venus in comparison with Earth but that too was a hypothesis – not a fact. The beauty of the alarmism is that in the end it is doomed to whither on the vine – and the greenhouse theory with it, too. Ultimately, scientists will have to invent a new theory to explain the hot temperatures on Venus – but I dare say some of them already have latent theories that require reawakening.