Doug Hamilton has a nifty Astronomy Workshop web page, with lots of fun little tools.
I had used some of these for my "Stars for Poets" course, but was reminded of them when looking at Bad Astronomy this morning.
Doug has a Generic central force integrator, an issue which came up recently of CosmicVariance (its an orbit-in-a-static-potential integrator, not an N-body tool, but it is a start, you'll get the general idea of the instabilities that occur for non-Newtonian forces).
You can smash a star through the Solar System, or just hit the Earth with your favourite asteroidal or comet impactor - my favourite
More like this
I hadn't really planned on writing anymore about animal rights extremists. The topic seemed as though it had played out over the few days. But those who've followed this blog know that I'm nothing if not tenacious when I grab onto a topic, and sometimes certain topics demand several posts.
tags: Snow Geese, Chen caerulescens,
It appears the de facto Congressional retirement plan is spreading to the lower orders. For those who aren't familiar with the Congressional retirement plan, here's what I mean:
Doug N. got a memo on faculty recruiting
Apparently post-boomer faculty are completely unreasonable in their expectations, and the silverbacks in academia are trying to analyse the new demands.