Patent ID: 7684972

Claim:
A method for assessing whether to terminate a computer-implemented simulation of a physical experiment, comprising: a. on one or more computing devices, executing computations associated with the computer-implemented simulation that model the physical experiment to determine if a desired outcome associated with the physical experiment will occur, wherein the computer-implemented simulation of the physical experiment is a computer-implemented simulation of at least two objects interacting with each other, and wherein each of the objects is represented by data describing a collection of particles, where each particle describes a mass, velocity and energy at a discrete spatial location associated with the object for a current time step of the simulation, and wherein executing computations comprises executing computations related to one or more of the laws of conservation of energy, mass and momentum with respect to the data describing the collection of particles for the at least two objects at each of a plurality of time steps of the interaction of the at least two objects, wherein executing further comprises computing for each particle data indicating a positive contribution of the particle when it is determined that the particle has moved towards a target region relative to the at least two objects, or data indicating a negative contribution of the particle when it is determined that the particle has moved away from the target region relative to the at least two objects, adding the contributions across the collection of particles for the at least two objects from the data computed for each of the particles to produce a net contribution; b. on the one or more computing devices, evaluating results of the computations to determine if the results indicate that the desired outcome has occurred, wherein the evaluating further comprises determining whether the net contribution is less than zero indicating that more particles are moving away from the target region than moving toward the target region and thus the desired outcome is likely not possible; c. if the desired outcome has not occurred, on the one or more computing devices, evaluating results of the computations with respect to at least one negative indication that the desired outcome is not possible prior to completion of the computer-implemented simulation of the physical experiment; and d. terminating the computations associated with the computer-implemented simulation on the one or more computing devices prior to completion of the computer-implemented simulation of the physical experiment if the at least one negative indication is present.