Is this a solar system simulator?

It simulates how the planets formed: dust orbiting the young Sun gathering into rings and gaps around four young planets. It is not an orrery of today's planets on their orbits. To watch the Sun itself being born, try The Sun Is Born, also free on this site.

Yes. It runs free in your web browser on WebGL 2, with no install, no account and no ads. Drag to look around.

The gravity of the Sun and four planets on the dust is real. The gas drag is sped up about four times so the rings form quickly, and the disk is far smaller and simpler than the real one.

Where does this come from?

It is a chapter of The Story of Everything in the Everdust app, which is free in full on the App Store for iPhone, iPad and Apple Vision Pro, on Google Play for Android and on the Meta Horizon Store for Meta Quest.

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The Story of Everything · VI

How the planets formed: a planet formation simulator

Dust orbits the young Sun and sorts itself into bright rings with dark gaps, the gaps carved by the planets.

Drag to look around; touch things to play with them.

The idea: Around a young star dust gathers into rings like the ones ALMA photographed around HL Tau, then grows into planets. A giant planet clears a gap in the disk. The live sim uses real gravity from the Sun and four planets, with gas drag sped up about 4× so the rings form in seconds.
With music: Kicks send a flare of starlight running out through the disk; vocals brighten the dust. Tap Demo beat for our own beat, or Your music to let it hear the room.
How it runs: It’s the same live simulation as in the Everdust apps, running in your browser on WebGL 2. If your device struggles, it lowers the detail a step at a time to keep the motion smooth.

How did the planets form?

After the Sun was born, about 4.6 billion years ago, it was still wrapped in a flat, spinning disk of gas and dust left over from the cloud it formed in. Everything that became the planets came from that disk.

Dust grains stuck together into pebbles, pebbles into boulders, and boulders into bodies kilometers across called planetesimals. Their gravity then pulled in more material, and the biggest grew into planets. Close to the Sun it was too warm for ice, so the inner planets formed from rock and metal and stayed small. Farther out, ice was plentiful, and Jupiter grew big enough to pull in huge amounts of gas.

A young giant planet doesn't sit quietly in the disk. Its gravity clears a gap along its orbit and herds the dust into bright rings on either side. In 2014 the ALMA telescope photographed exactly this around the young star HL Tauri: a disk of concentric rings with dark gaps, the first clear picture of planets being born.

This simulation uses real gravity from the Sun and four young planets acting on the dust. The drag from the gas is sped up about four times so that the rings and gaps form in seconds instead of thousands of years.

Questions

Is this a solar system simulator?: It simulates how the planets formed: dust orbiting the young Sun gathering into rings and gaps around four young planets. It is not an orrery of today's planets on their orbits. To watch the Sun itself being born, try The Sun Is Born, also free on this site.
Is it free?: Yes. It runs free in your web browser on WebGL 2, with no install, no account and no ads. Drag to look around.
How accurate is it?: The gravity of the Sun and four planets on the dust is real. The gas drag is sped up about four times so the rings form quickly, and the disk is far smaller and simpler than the real one.
Where does this come from?: It is a chapter of The Story of Everything in the Everdust app, which is free in full on the App Store for iPhone, iPad and Apple Vision Pro, on Google Play for Android and on the Meta Horizon Store for Meta Quest.

This is one world, in your browser

The full version is in the Everdust app.

The app has many more live worlds at full detail, games built on the same physics and narrated stories you step inside. It’s free to download, with no ads, on the App Store for iPhone, iPad, Apple Vision Pro and Apple TV, on Google Play for Android phones and tablets, on the Meta Horizon Store for Meta Quest and from everdust.ai for Mac.