Mail Archives: djgpp/1998/03/19/13:31:24
On Tue, 17 Mar 1998 04:20:40, Jason Dagit <thedagit AT mail DOT coos DOT or DOT us>
wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Here is how I would tackle this dilema:
>
> Perhaps I'm just ignorant (I'm 18 and still in HS) but wouldn't it be
> possible to find the paths of the celestial objects simply by applying
> the forces of gravity in 3 dimensions? I mean, you can find out the
> masses, you know the formula for gravity (or at least it should be easy
> to find) and if you can find the velocities and distances you're set.
> Of course this would be a very slow and time consuming process to
> calculate the gravity equation for all the celestial objects every
> second. One optimization would be to consider the ratio of masses and
> what the force of gravity was before the distance changed then use that
> to find the new force of gravity given a change in distance. Also, I
> think to get the right answers you would need to keep all the original
> information until you have processed all the celestial objects, then
> write over that old data with the new. Perhaps you could store all the
> changes in force in a transition matrix and then use that. I'm not sure
> about the best/fastest implementation.
>
> One forseeable (is that a word?!?) problem is that your data types won't
> give enough precision. Arbitrary math libs are out there, but they are
> slower than intrinsic data types.
>
> Before anyone calls me dumb for doing it this way, let me say, I've only
> had one year of physics and no one else has suggested a way in this ng.
Actually, that's EXACTLY the way I'm doing it. It's working, kinda,
so far... Umm, what did you mean about my variable types leading to
error?
Gili
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