Alex Deich
Ph.D candidate at University of Illinois
adeich2 (at) illinois.edu
What am I seeing?

A lot of my work has concerned simulation of orbital systems, so I made a naïve one to decorate the background of my website. Pictured are 5,000 particles orbiting a central body with a simple Newtonian gravitational force.

Reloading the website will reveal other initial conditions, each showing a simulacrum of one of three galaxy morphologies: Shell, ring, and spiral. It should be noted that these are mostly aesthetic— Spirals, in particular, are governed by complex N-body dynamics, which are not reproduced here. As a result, the spiral structures will dissipate after a few orbits. Try clicking on the particles and see what happens.

About this font