- Log in to post comments
Problem: There are relatively few free, open-source n-body gravitational simulators designed for consumer-grade hardware.
Purpose: This project aims to develop a high-speed, open-source, N-body gravitational simulation that enables public access to accurate computational methods for the study of astrodynamics.
Plan: The project will begin with an extensive consultation of existing literature in the fields of astrodynamics and numerical integration techniques for gravitational systems. Consultation with an expert in the field of astrophysics is expected. The simulator will be implemented in Rust and will use state of the art algorithms alongside a modern graphical interface to ensure both accuracy and usability. To achieve high performance and accuracy, the simulation will employ a coarse/fine integrator structure. The coarse integrator will use an implementation of the WHFast symplectic scheme for efficient long term evolution (Rein & Tamayo 2015), while the fine integrator will be an implementation of IAS15, an adaptive high-order integrator that will be used to enable high precision when non-Hamiltonian forces are not negligible (Rein & Spiegel 2014). Runtime arithmetic will use double-precision floating-point to enable precision at large distances, while Runge-Kutta and collocation coefficients will be calculated using 256 bit precision and cached at build time to ensure their accuracy. The model will encompass the sun, planets, and their moons. Initial conditions will be derived from ephemerides published by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Visualization will be implemented using the Bevy library in an interactive three-dimensional environment. The final result will be a public code repository containing a functional, interactive, high-fidelity solar system simulator.
References
Rein, H., & Tamayo, D. (2015). WHFast: A fast and unbiased implementation of a symplectic Wisdom–Holman integrator for long-term gravitational simulations. MNRAS, 452(1), 376-388. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stv1257
Rein, H., & Spiegel, D. (2014). IAS15: A fast, adaptive, high-order integrator for gravitational dynamics, accurate to machine precision over a billion orbits. MNRAS, 446(2), 1424-1437. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stu2164