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Author Topic: Mercury, Venus, and Mars flies away from the Sun  (Read 5645 times)

jahaynes

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Mercury, Venus, and Mars flies away from the Sun
« on: December 20, 2011, 07:19:55 PM »
I was curious if our solar system would look different in a few billion years, but I found in a few thousand years the inner planets are thrown into the coldness of the void. I'm not an astrophysicist but I'm confident this will not happen  ;D

Does increasing the frame speed dramatically cause the physics to misbehave?

smjjames

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Re: Mercury, Venus, and Mars flies away from the Sun
« Reply #1 on: December 20, 2011, 07:23:59 PM »
I was curious if our solar system would look different in a few billion years, but I found in a few thousand years the inner planets are thrown into the coldness of the void. I'm not an astrophysicist but I'm confident this will not happen  ;D

Does increasing the frame speed dramatically cause the physics to misbehave?

Yep, if you set the frame speed too high, the orbits will become unstable. Also, the position of the planets won't look any different (unless we, or some other species, mess with the orbits), but the sun will be brighter and on its way towards becoming a red giant.

Darvince

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Re: Mercury, Venus, and Mars flies away from the Sun
« Reply #2 on: December 20, 2011, 07:46:19 PM »
The reason this happens is because the time step is how often gravity is calculated, so of course a very high time step is far more unstable.

bedan

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Re: Mercury, Venus, and Mars flies away from the Sun
« Reply #3 on: January 21, 2012, 05:03:54 AM »
I was curious if our solar system would look different in a few billion years, but I found in a few thousand years the inner planets are thrown into the coldness of the void. I'm not an astrophysicist but I'm confident this will not happen  ;D

Does increasing the frame speed dramatically cause the physics to misbehave?

Yep, if you set the frame speed too high, the orbits will become unstable. Also, the position of the planets won't look any different (unless we, or some other species, mess with the orbits), but the sun will be brighter and on its way towards becoming a red giant.

Nope, the reason for this happening is that the simulation actually simulates a malevolent extraterrestrial species wreaking havoc on our solar system in a few million years.

FiahOwl

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Re: Mercury, Venus, and Mars flies away from the Sun
« Reply #4 on: January 22, 2012, 07:37:44 PM »
Yes bedan, you are correct.

Dan Dixon

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Re: Mercury, Venus, and Mars flies away from the Sun
« Reply #5 on: February 03, 2012, 10:42:58 PM »
Does increasing the frame speed dramatically cause the physics to misbehave?

This is one of the most common questions about Universe Sandbox. We'll be adding better feedback to explain this when you crank up the time step and everything flies apart unexpectedly.