Black Hole Launcher

April 11, 2019

With the release of the first picture of a black hole this week – I decided a new project was in order.  Gotta jump on the hype train, after all.

The only problem was I thought of this on Monday, and the picture was coming out Wednesday.

It was going to be a rush order.

I already had a fair bit of the tech in order, with my other General Relativistic projects, so it was doable.  And indeed it is done — Black Hole Launcher.

I figured I’d boil it all down to just throwing rocks around a black hole.  Simple to play around with for a few minutes, or longer if you got really into it.  Eventually scope-creep came in (just a bit!) and I added light beams, and a variable mass for the black hole, etc.  But it still stayed delightfully minimal.  (A new thing I’m striving for in my projects).

So go ahead, give it a try.  See if you can get a rock to orbit.  Can you detect any precession?  How about light beams, can they orbit?

And a quick, more general note on TestTubeGames.  Right now, I’m exploring making smaller, quicker projects… so keep an eye on this space for new things.  I’ve also built a new Discord server for folks that want to chat a bit more and get an inside scoop, which you can find here.

Thanks for your support!

-Andy