Mac OS X Quantum Simulations

Jeremy Lee writes "There are some 'educational' apps that transcend the merely interesting, and expand you mind with the force of a crowbar in the cerebellum. Celestia is one. Atom in a box is another. I keep it handy on my new iBook to blow the minds of chemist friends. It only runs on PowerPC Macs, but it's almost a justification for getting one. It should be used in schools to teach chemistry." Celestia is also great (and available for other platforms) ... I couldn't download it from the main link on the page, but was able to get it from SF.net. But if you really want to amaze your friends, turn your Mac into a Desktop Cray.

Comments

Celestia

[Nexum]

My God,

I thought the CosmoSaver screensaver was good but Celestia is amazing - if you have OSX, or a friend with OSX, or if you are anywhere near an Apple store go get a look at it. When the camera zoomed out from Earth and showed the entire Galaxy for the first time my jaw dropped...

-Nex

Re:Celestia

[Igor47]

celestia works perfectly fine in windows, too. haven't tried the *nix version, but its there. everyone needs to download this. its amazing!!!

Re:Celestia

[Tseran]

My God, Its full of stars!

Great article, this one.

[torpor]

I really like it when /. posts stuff that's "just cool". Politics and religion are one thing. Cool code that someone wrote just coz is another thing entirely. Really makes my weekend to find stuff like this!

Celestia is fantastic.

X-Plane, also (if you can get it all together and all running), is really great. I'd love to see the two merge, somehow, heh heh ... great for us armchair (or, in my case, tiBook) astronauts.

Incidentally, if you like 'odd software thats just cool for being cool' then you ought to know about sweetcode.org ... so many gems on this site.

Caution warranted?

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps coincidence, but after trying Desktop Cray and Celestia (in that order) got my very first kernel panic... I've been running OS X since 10.0 and have never had one 'til now.

You said it!

[interactive_civilian]

I've been playing around w/ Celestia ever since Slashdot ran an artical about making a CD of Open Source Software for Windows awhile back (I think it was an Ask Slashdot...I'm lazy and drunk so feel free to do a search). Celestia was mentioned in the comments of that story and I thought I would check for a MacOS X version and...DAAAAAAAMMMMMNNNN!!!!

There is something to be said about zipping to objects on the other side of the universe in just a few seconds. And it runs surprisingly well, even on my Late 2001 iBook (600MHz w/ 384MB of RAM and 8MB VRAM). This program is the ultimate for armchair (or bar-top as my case would be at the moment...gotta love wireless internet in Japan) astronomers. It does seem to have problems rendering Earth (as someone else mentioned the mirror effect somewhere in the comments of this story) but everything else is just amazing.

If you haven't downloaded this software yet, then the terrorists have already won...err...no, that isn't right. But seriously, get it and get it like now...as in yesterday! It is AWESOME.

BTW, on a side note, has anyone had any success compiling Celestia from source. I tried but failed (unfortunately, don't remember why). No particular reason to compile from source, but I wanted to try and see if it would be a bit more optimized. Anyway, I had difficulty. Anyone else?

Cheers. :)

Re:Mind-bending visual bug

[kalidasa]

That's because your vid card can't handle the hi-res Earth. My iBook does the same thing if I have the settings wrong. Change the settings on Celestia for lower res and the earth should reappear.

Re:Desktop Cray?

[Anonymous Coward]

The app is a hoax. http://www.macmerc.com/article.php?sid=536

A bit out of date?

[Greedo]

I read this article and just installed it. Wow.

However, I'm I the only one who still sees Skylab orbiting the earth? Shouldn't it be in a geostationary orbit, approximately 0km above Australia?

breve

[jeffehobbs]

I'd have to say that breve:

http://www.spiderland.org/breve/

is one of the coolest scientific apps out for OS X right now. It takes some time to wrap your head around it, but with a little work, you can be writing your own 3D OpenGL simulations...!

~jeff

well their CEO is called Romeus Y. Arcy

[davesag]

and Romeus Y. Arcy is a pretty obvious anagram for Seymore Cray. I downloaded it, ran it and was amused for about 3 seconds by dablinkenlights. Funnier is their forums with people actually claiming this thing does make their mac run faster. hats-off to a well conceived prank. - best thing is the icon imho.

incedentally there is a real Cray YMP in the Science Museum in London bearing a plaque with a quote from Seymore Cray claiming that when he heard that Apple had bought a Cray to help design the new Mac he replied that was funny, cos he was using a Mac to design the next Cray.