APOD: Game: Super Planet Crash (2022 Jun 19)

[APOD Robot]

Game: Super Planet Crash

Explanation: Can you create a planetary system that lasts for 1000 years? Super Planet Crash, the featured game, allows you to try. To create up to ten planets, just click anywhere near the central star. Planet types can be selected on the left in order of increasing mass: Earth, Super-Earth, Ice giant, Giant planet, Brown dwarf, or Dwarf star. Each planet is gravitationally attracted not only to the central Sun-like star, but to other planets. Points are awarded, with bonus factors applied for increasingly crowded and habitable systems. The game ends after 1000 years or when a planet is gravitationally expelled. Many exoplanetary systems are being discovered in recent years, and Super Planet Crash demonstrates why some remain stable. As you might suspect after playing Super Planet Crash a few times, there is reason to believe that our own Solar System has lost planets during its formation.

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[orin stepanek]

Solar system???? Maybe we shouldn't call then planets at all! Giants and rocky orbs!

[Sa Ji Tario]

Today Father's Day is celebrated in many countries, my contribution

¡Feliz Día del Padre!
Happy father's day
Alles gute zum Vatertag
عيد أب سعيد
З днём бацькі
Честит ден на бащата
父亲节快乐
Bòn fèt PAPA
Glædelig Fars dag
Aitaren egun zoriontsua
Joyeuse fête des Pères
Feliz día do PAI
Buona festa del papà
Kia pai te ra o matua
God farsdag
Szczęśliwego dnia ojca
Otalar kuni bilan
Usuku oluhle loba

[johnnydeep]

Cool game, but I see no "Super Earth" per the description. The available types of planets to add in the game are: Earth, Ice Giant, Giant Planet, Brown Dwarf, Dwarf Star. Also, I'm not sure what the single planet it always starts with is. Is there an option to start with just the star? I added one Earth mass planet in the habitable zone, and it lasted for over 1000 years right away. I assume that's not remarkable. I added my initials to the "leader board" but I don't know where that appears. Perhaps I need to explore some more...

EDIT: 2nd try - I started with the Kepler-11 system and added a single Ice Giant, and also hit 1000 years and 269000 "points". Again, I assume that's nothing special. Sadly, I can't get it to progress fast enough (or else my PC is too slow), and leaving the browser tab to do something else seems to halt the orbits. Annoying.

EDIT2: I also can't seem to add any type of planet outside the maximum AU circle it starts with. Why not? (unless it's my browser)

EDIT3: the high scores table and chart of the planets added also doesn't show up for me. I tried the Vivaldi (Chromium based) and Edge browsers. Is it just me? This is what I see:

[Chris Peterson]

Game: Super Planet Crash

Explanation: Can you create a planetary system that lasts for 1000 years? Super Planet Crash, the featured game, allows you to try. To create up to ten planets, just click anywhere near the central star. Planet types can be selected on the left in order of increasing mass: Earth, Super-Earth, Ice giant, Giant planet, Brown dwarf, or Dwarf star. Each planet is gravitationally attracted not only to the central Sun-like star, but to other planets. Points are awarded, with bonus factors applied for increasingly crowded and habitable systems. The game ends after 1000 years or when a planet is gravitationally expelled. Many exoplanetary systems are being discovered in recent years, and Super Planet Crash demonstrates why some remain stable. As you might suspect after playing Super Planet Crash a few times, there is reason to believe that our own Solar System has lost planets during its formation.

In physics, this is known as the n-body problem. It goes back to the 3-body problem... the effort to mathematically describe the dynamics of three bodies in mutual orbits. Turns out there is no solution. The 2-body problem is well understood, with solutions going back to Kepler and Newton. But outside of special contrived cases, there is no formulaic solution to any system with more than two bodies. Such systems can only be analyzed numerically- that is, by simulations like the one implemented in today's APOD. And from such simulations (and other theory) we understand that any system with more than two bodies will not be perfectly stable. It will exhibit chaotic behavior, and given enough time, will radically change. Luckily for us, all the dozens or hundreds of other bodies of significant mass were thrown out of the Solar System early on, leaving just a few bodies, with orbits well separated, such that our system exhibits a high degree of stability. But not perfect. And if a rogue star, planet, or black hole decides to pass too close to the Solar System, or through it (which will eventually happen), all of our planetary orbits could be scrambled.

[Cousin Ricky]

The game literally does not fit on my computer screen.

[Guest]

1st try, made it to 1000 with all Earth size planets. Others I added larger planets and didn’t even make it to 100.

[Chris Peterson]

The game literally does not fit on my computer screen.

Just decrease the zoom in your browser.

[Locutus76]

Made it to a 1000 easily after a few times, with scores up to a couple of million. But they don’t get saved. Put a brown dwarf really close to the star and create a binairy pair. Ghe add a few extra on the outer edge and speed it up to max.

[johnnydeep]

My best score. Didn't have to try too many times. The high score table still doesn't show though.

That's enough for me for this Sunday afternoon diversion!