science { its all relative

Very cool story link over on Omninerd: http://www.omninerd.com/2007/03/31/news/1204

It discusses a hypothesis by Dr. Vay using Special Relativity to reduce the time to simulate systems with multiple dimensions of scale (long/short) in both distance and time. Very cool stuff.

From the abstract:

Noninvariance of Space- and Time-Scale Ranges under a Lorentz Transformation and the Implications for the Study of Relativistic Interactions

J.-L. Vay
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA

(Received 16 January 2007; published 30 March 2007)

We present an analysis which shows that the ranges of space and time scales spanned by a system are not invariant under Lorentz transformation. This implies the existence of a frame of reference which minimizes an aggregate measure of the range of space and time scales. Such a frame is derived, for example, for the following cases: free electron laser, laser-plasma accelerator, and particle beams interacting with electron clouds. The implications for experimental, theoretical, and numerical studies are discussed. The most immediate relevance is the reduction by orders of magnitude in computer simulation run times for such systems.

Omninerd's tiny overview said his first test reduced the compute time from a week down to 30 minutes. This could represent a great leap in scientific study in the field of physics if this catches on.