Spiral Galaxy Simulation

A very basic approximation to a spiral galaxy. Each star is on an elliptical orbit that does not evolve over time (simple two-body dynamics, in other words). The spiral is formed by giving the star orbits some eccentricity (mean 0.35 with standard deviation 0.1, in this case) and then orienting each orbit's major axis as a linear function of its length. Half the stars' orbits are rotated an additional 180 degrees to form the second spiral. The stars are colored in ad hoc fashion as a linear function of their orbits' major axis lengths. The stars are uniformly distributed over a range of orbit major-axis lengths which I'm sure is not realistic; this is why there is a visible elliptical outer boundary around the galaxy.

Details here: http://playtechs.blogspot.com/2010/04/spiral-galaxy-hack.html

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• spiral
• galaxy
• simulation

[mcneja]

No, I don't think matter falls into the center of a galaxy as a matter of course.

In this particular simulation the stars are just orbiting; there are no collisions. You'd need collisions to convert the stars' kinetic energy to something else for them to fall into the center.

[mcneja]

Edited description above with URL for details

[EduEnYT]

im going mad trying to make something like this on universe sandbox, but no luck so far :(

[FlargidyTV]

Is the middle of it not eating any of it? It looks like it just circled faster and faster but it didn't show anything fall into the middle.

[Razorboy91]

what the software please reply