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From: carpent@SRC.Honeywell.COM (Todd Carpenter)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Gravity Well (Was Re: is there LIFE out there?)
Message-ID: <38051@srcsip.UUCP>
Date: 7 Nov 89 21:03:16 GMT
References: <583@uwm.edu> <7200158@m.cs.uiuc.edu> <1989Oct30.193813.4661@uunet!unhd> <3343@vax1.tcd.ie> <341@vsserv.scri.fsu.edu>
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In-reply-to: prem@geomag.fsu.edu's message of 7 Nov 89 20:25:54 GMT


> prem@geomag.fsu.edu (Prem Subrahmanyam) writes:

>     Yes, there is already a gravity simulator around.  I believe it was
  [misc deleted]
>  paying for long-distance charges.  It works really well, except when two
>  planets get closer than kissing close.  Gravity goes infinite and one
>  planet will zoom through the other at ludicrous speeds.  Except for this
>  case, though, everything is very well behaved.  C source is also included.

  Tee-Hee. Yes, and some people passed this off as the "sling shot" effect.  It
  certainly would be if the physical world had precision limits.  Unless of
  course, the masses are widely different, and the objects collide (not good
  for a space vessel and planet, however), in which case you *do* get
  outrageous speeds.

  As an example of this, take a basketball and a ping-pong ball.  Hold the ping
  pong on top, just barely touching the BB.  Drop them both at the same time,
  and shield your eyes as the ping-pong ball shoots about the room.

  What does this have to do with the Amiga?  Well, precision is always an issue
  when writing programs.  Remember the boundary values!