Big Bang

[aldersprig]

The sign said “Escalators to Big Bang," but it was a bit of a misnomer.

For one, the escalators led first to the display of the Big Bang, which, while interesting, was not really the heart of the exhibit.

No, to really, really get your hands on, as it were, you had to know where the other es

read on…

Comments

[kelkyag]

Insufficient computing power. So far. :)

(I've had fun with the fish-tank level "evolution" displays.)

[aldersprig]

Those really exist? Neat.

[kelkyag]

The ones I've poked at -- and it's been years, there are probably snazzier, shinier things with many more options out there now -- were a big video screen of a simulated "fish tank", which let visitors build and modify cartoon-y fish, let them loose in the tank to hunt and breed, and see how the occasional "mutation" (random or selected by a visitor) affected which ones did well or poorly.

[aldersprig]

Neat! That sounds like fun~

[sauergeek]

I've been to some of the New York museums, but not that one. I'm imagining something like the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History or the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, both of which I have visited on multiple occasions.

I want to see what these Behinds are. I also want to mess with the simulators, though that phrase "what seemed, generally, like a couple hours" is worrisome.

My first speculation about the simulation always producing humans is that (presumably at least) humans came up with it, and couldn't figure out how to make a world sufficiently different that it wouldn't produce humans. Though I'd expect perhaps another dominant species — dogs, pigs, and dolphins all come to mind — might crop up. Certainly there have been computer-based world simulators that did that; SimEarth comes to mind.

But what this really sounds like is "Define the universe. Give three examples.".