To follow up on this one -- something interesting is happening with the setup to make these circles...
Reposted from
Andy Hall
Ah, and since I love adding a physics question onto these... here's a picture I took of this setup after a few minutes had passed.
There are seemingly a bunch of circles. Is this physically expected? A programming error? Newton's Rings? (Ha.)
Again, just gravity. What do you think happened?
There are seemingly a bunch of circles. Is this physically expected? A programming error? Newton's Rings? (Ha.)
Again, just gravity. What do you think happened?
Comments
But in this case it's just good old fashioned physics.
It's not quite symmetrical. (I placed them with basically a spray-paint tool... and wasn't too concerned about making it perfect.)
But even though it looks fairly random... there's order lurking here.
This happens for two reasons.
1) there has to be some amount of asymmetry going on in the disk.
-and-
2) The further out an object is, the slower it orbits.
Here is a more "random" random disk. As in, it's not me trying and failing to draw a circle, it is actually a circle.
(Since it's random, there is some asymmetry, but it's fairly minimal.)
No spiral.
(Is that something you can say?)
All the particles start - and continue - in a circular orbit around the central star.
And this spiral gets wound tighter and tighter until it's incredibly thin. Much like in the picture that started this whole thread.
Just a simple consequence of 1/r^2. For once, not a bug!