Smallest possible object in Celestia

[Tleilax]

I was thinking of making a detailed addon of a single atom. I am just making it a new planet around Sol. When I type in an appropriate radius, the atom does not appear in Celestia. When I change it to a size of a few miles, it shows up. What's the smallest an object can be in Celstia?

[GlobeMaker]

The smallest object that I looked at today was 40 nano meters wide.
I also looked at a 400 nanometer 3D model of Earth. Here is a picture
of a 400 nanometer Earth in Celestia :


You can see that it is measured in kilometers wide : Radius 0.0000000004
I looked at it from a distance of 0.15 meters. The Field of View was
3.6 arc seconds (3.6")

I also made an Earth model 40 nano meters wide. But 4 nm was too small.
Here is the 40 nanometer Earth picture :


If I got closer, the picture would have been better. It is necessary to
use the "a accelerator key" then the "z decelerator key" to approach
slowly, like .002 meters per second to get really close.

The model jumps around with jitter as it is approached slowly.

The 40 nano meter width is like 130 atoms wide, if each
atom is .3 nano meters wide. ( 3 angstrom atomic diameter).

Here is the spacecraft.ssc file excerpt :


"Bonsai_Earth_200x" "Sol/Earth"
{
Class "spacecraft"
# Mesh "amar.3ds"
# Mesh "oval2.3ds"
Mesh "bonsai_earth_200x.3ds"
# 0000000001111 400 nanometers
# ten to the minus 1234567890123
Radius 0.0000000004
Beginning 2446482.0 # Bonsai_Earth_200x Hotel Launched November 3, 2005
# Ending

EllipticalOrbit {
Period 0.02
SemiMajorAxis 8000.0
Eccentricity 0.0
Inclination 0
AscendingNode 0.0
ArgOfPericenter 0.0
MeanAnomaly 0.0
}

Obliquity 180
RotationOffset 180
EquatorAscendingNode 180.0

Albedo 0.34
}

You can download the 3D models of Earth, Mars and Venus at

http://www.reliefglobe.com/video.html

Each planet is 2 megabytes with land elevations
exaggerated 200 times taller than normal..

I expect that you cannot look at a single atom alone, because of the jitter
in its position as you approach it slowly. But I could be wrong.

[Cham]

The model jumps around with jitter as it is approached slowly.

The 40 nano meter width is like 130 atoms wide, if each
atom is .3 nano meters wide. ( 3 angstrom atomic diameter).

...

I expect that you cannot look at a single atom alone, because of the jitter
in its position as you approach it slowly. But I could be wrong.

The jittering effect is the inevitable consequence of Quantum Mechanics. There's no way you could see an atom as a sharp object, even within Celestia !

[GlobeMaker]

The smallest particle I looked at today was 10 nanometers wide.
That is about 30 atoms wide. The number of atoms in this
spheroid is 4/3 pi r cubed.
r = 15 atomic diameters
r cubed = 3375
number of atoms 4/3 * 3.14 * 3375 = 14130 atoms

When time is going at normal speed, this particle jumps around,
like it has brownian motion. When time is frozen, the particle stands still,
unless the view is zoomed or rotated. Then the position of the particle
moves around with a jittery motion.

There are at least two reasonable explanations for this uncertainty in the
position :

1 The position is quantized by the digital program, and the views that
I am using cause a re-calculation of the position within a digital grid.
This coordinate grid is too coarse to keep the particle centered in the view.

2 The Developers have put instructions in the Celestia software
to simulate the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. This uncertainty
concerning small particles links the position (x) to the momentum (mv).

The limit of certainty is expressed in the inequality :

delta x times delta mv is greater than Planck's constant over 4 pi

Maybe The Developers can comment on the presence of logic in
the Celestia program which simulated the Uncertainty Principle. Or
the lack of its presence in this simulation.

It is a goal of mine to contribute to an Infinite Zoom establishment,
like Celestia. But the zooming into the quark level is not possible at
this time-space. Sure, there is uncertainty, but the visual representation
of these quantum effects is not limited to the present jitter, which takes
solid particles off screen. An advanced visual representation of molecular
and atomic scale particles could include some of the following ideas :

1 Show a cloud which includes shading for the probability that a particle
may exist in various microscopic positions.

2 Show an arrow pointing in the direction of the particle's position
off screen when time is frozen.

3 Use collision detection so two atoms can hit each other.

4 Allow me to put into orbit a particle accelerator, which allows
magnetic and electric fields to accelerate atomic scale objects. Then
I can collide a 10 nm particle with a smaller particle and watch the
resulting recoils and break-ups.

5 Implement the basic forces of electric, magnetic, strong, weak nuclear
forces using computer programming, so particles can be orbiting
in a cyclotron. Then collision experiments can be run with time-space
slowed down.

I want to smash atoms in orbit around the Celestia Earth and watch
the results with my telescope located in the Andromeda Galaxy.
That would be the Infinite Zoom.

[Malenfant]

Celestia is a solar system simulator, not an atom simulator. Zooming down to atomic sizes would serve absolutely no purpose in celestia, asking for it would be like asking for full word processing capabilities in Photoshop. It's just not what the program was made for, and there are other things out there that can do that sort of thing better (eg molecule viewers for chemists).

I seriously doubt that anyone's put in something that simulates the uncertainty principle. The jitter is probably down to how the program updates the position of the object at extremely close zoom.

[Cham]

I seriously doubt that anyone's put in something that simulates the uncertainty principle. The jitter is probably down to how the program updates the position of the object at extremely close zoom.

LOL !

Malenfant, it was a joke !

[Malenfant]

Malenfant, it was a joke !

I realised it was a joke . I get the impression that Globemaker thought it wasn't, however.

[Buzz]

I think there is a use for going down to molecular scales: it would allow a "powers of 10"-like tour from the smallest to the largest structures in the universe!

[Malenfant]

I think there is a use for going down to molecular scales: it would allow a "powers of 10"-like tour from the smallest to the largest structures in the universe!

Right now Celestia doesn't really even support the metre scale (unless you had a really small topographic tile embedded in a bigger one at the 10 metre scale embedded in a bigger one at the 100m and then 1000m and then 10000m scale etc), and you're talking about starting at atomic/molecular level?!

You couldn't even really do a tour like that in Celestia at the larger scale (say, starting at 100 km), unless there are addons that can show the large scale structure of the universe. THAT at least could be useful and within the capabilities of Celestia.

[Buzz]

There are very high resolution textures for parts of Earth, and human scale models like Stonehenge. So if one would zoom in to regions like that, a nice experience is definitely possible!
Edit: Selden has made some very nice addons showing the galaxy distributions in the distant universe, so zooming out a few billion light years is already worth while with them.

[Malenfant]

There are very high resolution textures for parts of Earth, and human scale models like Stonehenge. So if one would zoom in to regions like that, a nice experience is definitely possible!
Edit: Selden has made some very nice addons showing the galaxy distributions in the distant universe, so zooming out a few billion light years is already worth while with them.

Sure. But going to anything less than the scale of a metre would be pointless. Celestia isn't intended to be a tool to show the universe on a molecular or even microscopic level.

Plus, I just did a tour of my own going 10x each step (just start at 1000 km above Earth, and add a zero to the km in the Goto Object window each time). It's not really that exciting right now.

[Buzz]

That does not mean it cannot be exciting in the future.