Ever feel like you could do a better job ? Feel like you could run the world ? Master the universe itself ? Well, here's your chance! Build an entire planetary system and play with the laws of physics and gravitation. This great sandbox site allows you to create a planetary body and then see how it interacts with other objects. Build a binary system, create a trinary! Pelt a planet with asteroids, send a trojan through your system and see how its path is affected by the nearby bodies. Its a deceptively simple process, but strangely satisfying and quite hypnotic. Simply point and click to create a planet and flick another planet towards it to see how the gravitational forces interact. Simple, but great fun and quite educational too.
I've had a little play with this. By necessity its very simplistic, but still enjoyable for a while. I'm tempted to get my hands on Universe Sandbox, but alas I don't think my old laptop is up to the task. Maybe I could find a supercomputer on ebay cheap to run a relativistic universe simulator.....
ReplyDeleteHa ha I had a similar experience, my craptop could just about do a round of Sudoku, so a full fledged sim is out of the question, but this is fun for ten minutes or so. A bit like the old Atari Lander game!
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