Fanfan 🐻 nihiliste ✋️🔺️🤚 on Nostr: Well, there was a trick of course. This was all done in a 3D box with periodic ...

Well, there was a trick of course. This was all done in a 3D box with periodic boundary conditions. It is to the Sun what a cubic cow sliced in 32^3 little cubes is to a real elephant. John von Neumann is famous for saying that you can model an elephant with 4 parameters, and have his trunk wiggle using a 5th parameter. He was kind of right.

That left us with unsatisfactory theory, very dubious experiments, and over-simplified numerical simulations. Right after that, Peter Gilman, an american, came up with the first fully-explicit *spherical* numerical models of dynamos driven by rotating convection. They are american, they are powerful, they have the biggest (computer) in the room, everything is possible in this land of hope and opportunity. And so it was. It was very important. He found dynamo cycles too.