Simple Gravitational Orbit Simulator

[avandonk]

This is a bit of fun to play with

http://phet.colorado.edu/sims/my-solar-system/my-solar-system_en.html


Try the slingshot or multiple stars may explain those orphan planets.

Bert

[renormalised]

Lots of fun:):)

[michaellxv]

The Four Star Ballet is interesting. What appears to be a perfectly symmetrical, balanced and stable system goes haywire at ~Time=30. Up until that time the positions and velocities are all mirror images of each other. At T=30 the positions start to vary by 0.1.

I assume this is just accumulation of rounding errors in the program. But in the real world it makes you wonder how any long term stable systems manage to develop.

[avandonk]

Stable is a relative term. The orbits of the planets of our solar system are chaotic at long time frames. We do not perceive this as our lives are short.

bert

[Robh]

Nice one Bert!
Enjoyed playing around with it, especially those collisions.

Regards, Rob

[michaellxv]

This implies that evolution needs only a relatively short time to go from nothing to us before we get wiped out.

[multiweb]

This is such a great visual tool. Loads of fun I agree. :thumbsup: I have an old program that is a galaxy collider with 1000s of dots representing stars. Similar functionality. YOu set the intitial vectors and numbers of galaxies. Gotta dig it out on my HD and post a link.