Tikalon Blog is now in archive mode.
An easily printed and saved version of this article, and a link
to a directory of all articles, can be found below: |
This article |
Directory of all articles |
Ornamental Orbits
October 29, 2012
As they say, "
A picture is worth a thousand words," so
scientific papers contain many
graphs and other images.
Computationally speaking, there are about 100,000 24-bit
words in a multi-
megapixel photograph, so this
adage needs to be updated.
Programmers use whatever devices are available to them to produce graphic images. The
oscilloscope was likely the first such apparatus for producing graphical output from
computers, followed by
pen plotters and
printers. The pen plotters could produce simple images using
vector graphics, and printers could produce
ASCII art images, such as the figure, below.
The first graphics I did on a computer was printing computed
phase diagrams for
binary alloys. This was done in the
APL programming language, and the diagrams were rendered as huge
matrices in which the numbers were replaced by keyboard characters. Very nicely, the APL character set has many
Greek characters, which were convenient for labeling
alpha phases, etc.
When I finally had a vector graphics
terminal in my office, I played with a common program at the time that gave a graphic based on a person's name. The program was extremely simple, just plotting lines between (x,y) points defined in a
phase space of characters. The points were defined as (a
i,a
i+1), where a
i is the
ordinal value of the character (a=1, b=2, etc.). This is easy to do with a
spreadsheet program, as the following example demonstrates.
"George Washington" rendered in alphabetic phase space.
The points are (ai,ai+1), where ai is the ordinal value of the character.
Graph rendered using Gnumeric)
Often, scientific calculations result in
aesthetically pleasing images. The reason for this might be that our eyes are drawn to
symmetrical vistas, and
symmetry abounds in the equations that describe most
physical processes. To investigate the possibility of generating "art" from a very basic physical process, I wrote a program (source code available,
here) to display the
trajectory of an object under the influence of a basic
inverse square (1/r
2) force from a
random set of ten other objects in a
plane.
This is like the
gravitational attraction experienced by a strange
asteroid entering a strange
planetary system. The asteroid is strange, since it's initially at rest, and the planetary system is strange because there is no
star, all the
planets have the same
mass, and a planet will disappear when it appears that the asteroid will
impact. This last condition allows the asteroid to enter a somewhat stable
orbit, since all the disastrous (
pun intended) paths have been removed.
This disappearing planet case is reminiscent of the
episode, "
Collision Course," of the
television series,
Space: 1999.[1] The story line of that series is that the
far side of the Moon was used as a dumping ground for
Earth's nuclear waste, and the waste erupts into an explosion that pulls the
Moon, with several hundred people living there, out of its orbit and into
deep space.
This series was unlike other space adventure series, since the scripts often had a
surreal character. The "Collision Course" episode revolved around the idea that the Moon was on course to collide with an alien planet, Atheria. As foretold by the Queen of Atheria, the planet disappeared at the point of collision. I must admit that since I'm a fan of
"hard" science fiction, I never enjoy this type of story.
The following is a gallery of obits from my program, chosen for their aesthetic value. You can rerun these, perhaps with minor modification of the positions to see what happens; or, modify the program to give different results. Since this is "art," any physics errors you may find in the source code were strictly intentional (LOL).
A gallery of some calculated orbits. Click images to see positions of the ten random objects in the plane. The test object starts at (0,0) |
Reference:
- Space:1999 page on the Internet Movie Database.
Permanent Link to this article
Linked Keywords: A picture is worth a thousand words; scientific literature; scientific paper; plot; graph; computation; word computer architecture; megapixel; digital photography; adage; programmer; oscilloscope; computer; pen plotter; printer; vector graphics; ASCII art; Lenna image; aliasing; character; phase diagram; binary alloy; APL programming language; matrix mathematics; Greek language; alpha; phase; computer terminal; phase space; ordinal; spreadsheet; Gnumeric; aesthetics; symmetry; physics; orbit.c; trajectory; inverse square law; randomness; random; plane; gravitation; gravitational attraction; asteroid; planetary system; star; planet; mass; impact event; orbit; disastrous etymology; List of Space: 1999 episodes; Collision Course; television series; Space: 1999; far side of the Moon; Earth; nuclear waste; Moon; interstellar travel; deep space; surrealism; surreal; "hard" science fiction; Internet Movie Database.