Question: Why do you build planets

Stefan Lines answered on 17 Nov 2014:

One of the best ways of determining if Scientific theories and hypotheses are correct is to put that new Physics into a computer simulation. The idea is that the simulation should produce the observed system if the Physics is correct. I try and understand planet formation, so I use Physics and numerical code on computers to try and ‘build’ planets that we see in real life. The type of planet that I study is circumbinary planets. We see them, but don’t understand how to make them using computers – so it suggests some physics is missing.