Solar structure and evolution, some notes on a global model of the sun, open and universally accessible on the Internet
Joergen Christensen-Dalsgaard,
You have described some of the pieces relevant for study of solar structure and evolution in words, pictures and pictures of equations. The equations in the PDF are not in portable symbolic mathematical form. The data from all the steps in the calibration of the model and its variations is not readily available. Your long and arduous listing of publications are all text and require searching and effort by every reader to find and often pay for, or to contact the authors and try to find in a form just to read. Let alone find the original equations, parameters, programs, data and things in the authors heads they did not write down.
Solar structure and evolution – https://arxiv.org/abs/2007.06488
Have you ever considered putting ONE model of the sun on the Internet? it can many options, variations, solvers, subsystems, subgroups, research areas, contributors, auditors, donors, learners, experiments, data streams, learning opportunities and the usual things on the Internet. But it should be a working model that does not only generate tables of data, but bolts nicely into the usual gamut of visualizations and simulations.
Just your “Aarhus Stellar Evolution Code” has 1670 entry pages on the Internet.
“Stellar Evolution Code” has 47,200 entry points
“Stellar Evolution” (“Code” OR “program” OR “simulation”) has 574,000 entry points.
From where I look, as Director of the Internet Foundation and concerned with ALL users of the Internet, this “solar model” is a mess. Bloated, repetitive, inaccessible, obscure, and generally wasting time for anyone who has an interest in the interior, surface and behaviors of the sun or stars. I know it is hard for one person. But as I see it, every one of the 25,000 universities and colleges in the world ought to teach stellar structure with the best on the planet current model available to everyone on the Internet. There are high school students who can write and run these kinds of things now.
I am looking at Rich Townsends Mad Star page at astro.wisc.edu where he has a model he worked on. The model seems to still be running and producing detailed tables. My guess is he could run the program in javascript and then display the results. Or run samples and have them available for browsing and interaction.
Arxiv.org has 450 results for the exact phrase “stellar evolution codes” so there are plenty of people working on bits and pieces. And only talking to themselves, and only showing their work in PDF which is not a model, not data, not interaction, not self-explaining, not linked to the background material, not open in the since that the cost per person is too high just to be able to check the work. PDF is the equivalent of paper. It requires a human mind to resolve all the things unsaid. But the Internet is fully capable of linking and explaining all the pieces and holding them as a working model for every level of visitor. I am thinking particularly of the 1.92 Billion first time learners from 5-20 in the world just now. And the many billions of working adults and older people who are inundated with solar system colonization stuff, solar wind and solar storm stuff – with no real time model of the sun to look at and play with. If google can make a global map, the smart people who make these models, and the supercomputer and exascale computer groups can put out a working model of the sun with the best in the world behaviors and all the associated mathematics – in symbolic form so that it can be verified and changes and altered and compared, all the associated data – so local research groups in different countries and different groups can try to improve their parts – knowing that they have the best future path and connections.
I chose one of the papers at random. Forbidden electron capture on 24Na and 27Al in degenerate oxygen-neon cores is recent by D Fahlin Stromberg, G Martinez-Pinedo, and F Nowaki. They use “stellar evolution code MESA” but do not provide a link directly from the abstract. There is no online access to their model, and I doubt to any of the other 449 in that list. and more on the Internet where people have not put things in open Arxiv.org type locations.
Their PDF is text selectable, but the equations are not is a symbolic mathematical models. Yes, I know. It is hard to run big models. But anyone can check the symbolics and when all the various papers models are in the same form, with the same units, where standard components as functions are readily available, then perhaps some degree of integration and verification is possible. Right now it is “a mess”. That is my technical term for a bubble up from many locations, everyone doing their own things, some attempt at bilaterals and a few clusters of cooperation, but on a global scale too diffuse, too disorganized and hurting every one of the millions of people who might want to, or need to depend on the results.
I like their paper, because I have been going through all the “nuclear data” (960,000 entry pages) on the Internet and many “nuclear portal” OR “nuclear portals” (17,700 entry pages) and specific online tools.
All these groups are just “sharing” things that are easy for them to dump on the Internet. They are not curating, condensing, simplifying (without throwing anything away). Virtually all of them are using 1990’s Internet methods “click and go to a whole new page forgetting everything that has happened”. And everyone is still using PDF which is only for printing – not sharing of content is algorithm accessible form.
You guys are smart, but I doubt you have spend 23 years looking at the formation, dynamics, costs and function of global online communities like I have. What I am seeing for all scientific and technical (all quantitative and social organizations) is that people are locked into talking about things, and not offering any working tools that complete and traceable.
The methods I am recommending are slightly different. Rather than clicking links, I am recommending hoverboxes. You see some beginning on Wikipedia (but they show the hoverbox and it is built by hand for each reference. it is not resizable, not moveable, not minimizable or maximizable, and it cannot be saved as a bookmark. You cannot hover the contents, and you cannot browse infinitely deep. When you use hovering with infinite depth, every page lets you see deeper for everything on the page. Not by manual link building, but by browser global reference and materials.
Now, I know that getting Google and the Chromium and similar browser groups is worse than herding cats. But it is possible for the solar modeling groups on the Internet to collectively offer best in the world browsers of their own, or browser extensions that bolt into content servers for all the proper nodes of a global solar model (yes I know all the stellar modeling groups, all the data streams, all their models down to new sensor developments at all scales. Yes, there are quantum computer groups, and manufacturers, investors and startups and crowd funding and online collaboration and learning. I deal with the whole of the Internet for all people.
I don’t have anything specific to ask you all. Just to think about this and maybe start moving in that direction – global collaboration online for ONE solar model and all the associated pieces and subprojects — not as a government or corporate monopoly that is going to quickly hurt more people than it helps, but an open and flexible collaboration based on shared formats, an agreement that “we are going to work towards this kind of world”, and some real effort to clean up a lot of things that never got done. Zooniverse and all the @Home groups show that there are millions of people who might help. There are some brilliant and hard working and dedicated young people coming along.
There are better models for (17b) than that old estimate. You are using MESA 10398 (21 Mar 2018) and
There is a lot I don’t know about what is going on in stellar modelling. Much of my time last year and still is on “covid” and “global climate change” and their related parts. It was when I investigated why the global response to covid was so slow (the diffusion rate is about one two hundredth of what it could be) it is because of PDF forcing a human reader with a substantial memory and infinite time into every critical path. People say they are busy and throw things on the Internet with less care than a university newsletter. Certainly with little or no thought to what it cost in actual time and effort to use what they write. For people having the exact setup, it might be convenient and easy. But that is getting rarer overall. More fragmentation and variations because many young groups are not being careful at all. Not managing, just having fun.
I have spent several years now going through GitHub.com and similar online communities. I have made recommendations for the core GitHub activities, and for some specific projects. But overall the problem is they are using 1970’s program management practices, with many volunteers and unpaid workers. There is little or no overall oversight, management or cost accounting. I am talking about human time for the developers, and human time and opportunities for potential users. I can simplify most of the projects, but I am trying to set priorities as I am only one person, however fast I work. So I wrote little notes like this most everyday when I see a big mess that your group ought to clean up yourselves.
I am not going to clean up nuclear data and stellar models for all the people, who should do it themselves. You all should take responsibility for what is on the Internet — NOT to suppress innovation, nor to build monopolies, but to make it easy for anyone who wants to work on problems to be able to see the whole of it, and to actually use the models, process the data – not in tiny dribs and drabs, but as part of the real work. I will try to do some examples. I am working on those right now. I was just trying to sketch out solar models and I thought I should try to write my thoughts and suggestions for you two groups. I know you are probably already doing some things. But the evidence on the Internet says your community has not got its act together.
For Covid, there are 250,000 people a month roughly dying. That will go on another couple of years or more. The main problem from anyone looking on the Internet for help is that WHO.Int and the people who are supposed to be responsible for things are terrible babies with Internet practices. They don’t know how to share in forms that can be immediately used, they think that talking about things is solving a problem, or that telling people as though give a lecture is actually enabling them. I have distilled it down to something anyone can understand – put all the mathematics in symbolic math forms that are universally open and accessible. Encourage visualizers and algorithm developments that use those forms to merge, compare, test and automate the equations. Take the equivalent intermediate programming code forms and get them cleaned up. Make sure all the hardware manufacturers have test programs to be sure they are implementing things properly. I am a bit tired, I know that last is a big vague. I can do it when I am working slowly and carefully. I just want to get this down in rough form.
The exascale software tools are pretty limited. The main weakness is they are treating software the same way it was done 60 years ago. Mainframe, each person gets an account, weeks or months of orientation. All the documentation separated from the working tools, nothing moveable after some low paid programmer sets it in stone. No clear community, or tools for people from widely different backgrounds to work together. i meet some good mathematicians who have no clue about physics, engineering, finance, or prototyping – but they can learn if the tools have hovers on everything.
The software needs to be courteous, patient, helpful without intruding, have infinite knowledge, parsimonious, efficient, accountable, and itself traceable. There are a lot of simultaneous and shifting requirements, but having gone through most every variation and view and pathway, it is not impossible. It is not really that hard, just tedious. It takes making the decision to just get started and keep going until it is done.
Do you want to spend another 50 years with every groups doing their own thing? We need ONE solar model that has everything — and it cannot be a monopoly. I traced out the social and economic and educational consequences of monopolies for things like the Large Hadron Collider, LIGO and similar scale projects. They do their jobs, but because they justify then on too narrow purposes, and do not trace out ALL the consequences of what they are doing, they end up having trouble without sustainable practices. Now a complete view and map of things that are global in scale, include tens of millions or even billions of users – are possible and really not that hard. Just tedious.
Richard K Collins, Director, The Internet Foundation
Rich,
When I got to the page after running this, all the links at the top of the page were not working. When I was on the page just now they work. Not sure if there was a change of environment for that after submission click page.
I am looking at your model output and you could easily have taken time to include a header for each so if the files gets scattered or different versions, they are clearly identifiable. When you dump things like this, it puts a burden on every user to find and fill in the basic information. That was OK in days when there were a few students or a few hundred or thousand people but now the global communities start in the tens of thousands and go up to tens of millions rather quickly. Not for each node, but for the whole topic, and when you trace the dependencies and connections, you need the whole of something or all are hurt by the omissions.
I followed your link to MesaWeb at mesa.slurceforge.net and their link “extending MESA” is broken. It is NOT sufficient to throw things on the Internet and expect it will function. You are in a global community and everyone has to expend effort to keep connections. Until I can get the Internet wired to be self-organizing. That is harder than your stellar models, but likewise, not impossible.
I just wrote some notes about stellar models on the Internet and mentioned your site. I am just starting on the topic (talking to people, I have been looking at all the groups on earth who use solar data in some form). The global climate groups and many many research groups need a comprehensive and integrated framework on the Internet. The two billion school kids need ONE model environment that links to all in an organized and complete fashion. I know how to do it and want to try some “small” communities like “stellar models” and “nuclear data” before tackling all of “covid”.
Solar structure and evolution, some notes on a global model of the sun, open and universally accessible on the Internet
Richard K Collins, Director, The internet Foudation
