Sycorax

Inspiration

Newtonian gravity may seem simple at the first glance. However, if there are more than 2 bodies involved in a system, the system becomes a dynamic system with the most initial conditions. The three body problem which tends to predict the movement of 3 bodies with known initial conditions such as momentum, mass, velocity. There is no closed-form general solution for this problem which contributed tremendously to the development of chaos theory. Until today researchers are still trying to find special solutions with numerical methods.

What it does

Syrocax stimulates Newtonian gravity. It is an interactive system which allows users to generate new planets and adjust their mass and position to observe how the universal gravity interacts on all these planets. Syrocax has 2 main features: a simulation of the solar system and a sandbox mode. Sycorax contains a model of solar system with real-time data from Wolfram|alpha knowledge base. It is able to display the accurate scale of the solar system and also supports a logarithmic scale display which allows the user to view the bigger picture. The sandbox mode allows users to create planets, adjust planets' position and mass to observe the effect of gravity.

How we built it

The main platform is Unity since it supports 3D simulation. The script that Unity recognizes is C#. We also use Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha to get real-time data of planets in solar system and Chat GTP to generate names for planets created by users.

Challenges we ran into

As the simulation of the solar system involves numbers that are too large for Unity. We have to create a new system of units to rescale all the data.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Sycorax’s simulation is realistic. It has the most reliable data on the solar system and realistic simulation of the planet's movement and rotation. In addition, each planet created in the sandbox mode has a distinguishable texture, name and color palette.

What we learned

All members in our team do not know Unity and C# well. So we learned and discovered a lot during this Hackton. And programming in a platform and a language that we are not familiar with is a fun challenge.

What's next for Untitled

Our next step is to add more adjustable characteristics for the planets in the sandbox which allow users to have greater freedom in their experiment of their gravity system. We also would like to develop our simulator in a VR system to enhance the user’s experience.