I have no objection to computer models; I object to computer models that can't be checked against data.
Cosmologists run a lot of models, to do things like try to determine the effects of dark matter on the universe. Such models are intrinsically problematic since they have to have resolution on the order of hundreds or thousands of lightyears on a side, or have to work with universes much smaller than the real one, or something that means the simulation is by necessity literally several dozen orders of magnitude smaller than the real universe (consider both the timestep and spatial dimensions).
But they can check the result by looking up in the sky and seeing if it matches. This allows them to overcome the problematic nature of the models and use them to say real things.
One wonders what exciting cosmological papers proposing all sorts of amazing and outlandish theories as a result of some computer model of the universe have been suppressed by the fact that they didn't correspond to the sky at all. I guarantee you that some very amazing simulations have been run that produced incredible results of great interest, whose only crime was that they completely failed to match the universe.
We don't have a tidally locked planet that has an active atmosphere in our solar system to look at.
I have no objection to computer models; I object to computer models that can't be checked against data.
Cosmologists run a lot of models, to do things like try to determine the effects of dark matter on the universe. Such models are intrinsically problematic since they have to have resolution on the order of hundreds or thousands of lightyears on a side, or have to work with universes much smaller than the real one, or something that means the simulation is by necessity literally several dozen orders of magnitude smaller than the real universe (consider both the timestep and spatial dimensions).
But they can check the result by looking up in the sky and seeing if it matches. This allows them to overcome the problematic nature of the models and use them to say real things.
One wonders what exciting cosmological papers proposing all sorts of amazing and outlandish theories as a result of some computer model of the universe have been suppressed by the fact that they didn't correspond to the sky at all. I guarantee you that some very amazing simulations have been run that produced incredible results of great interest, whose only crime was that they completely failed to match the universe.
We don't have a tidally locked planet that has an active atmosphere in our solar system to look at.