Numerical Simulation, An Art of Prediction, Volume 2

3The Universe and the Earth

Contemporary of Newton, Leibniz, and French mathematicians René Descartes (1596–1650) and Pierre de Fermat (1607–1665), Blaise Pascal (Figure 3.1) embodied an ideal form of all of them: that of a knowledgeable man. A physicist, mathematician and philosopher, he evoked, in one of his most famous texts, the singular place of humanity on Earth and in the Universe:

“Let humanity therefore contemplate the whole of nature in its high and full majesty, let us keep our sight away from the low objects that surround us. Let us look at this bright light put like an eternal lamp to illuminate the Universe, let the earth appear to us as a point at the cost of the vast tower that this star describes and let us be surprised that this vast tower itself is only a very delicate point towards the one that these stars, which roll in the firmament, embrace” ([PAS 60], translated from French).

Are researchers in astrophysics and geophysics, in the 21st Century, the heirs of the 17th Century scientists? With numerical simulation, they nowadays carry out real thought experiments, supported by data, in fields where concrete experimentation is not easily accessible – or even simply possible.

Solving certain enigmas of the Universe, which extend Pascal’s philosophical observations, and contributing to the analysis of geophysical risks – in order not to reduce it to a probability calculation – are two areas in which numerical simulation is becoming increasingly important. ...