History of this site

From my earlier attempts to solve the n-body problem numerically but also from history I knew that there were two prerequisites to fulfill if you wanted to solve this problem: at first accuracy and at second high enough computations per time unit. So this was a typical problem for a 32bit processor with floating point unit.

In the mid-1980s you had the choice between three 32bit Processors with potential FPU support. Motorolla 68000, National Semiconductor 32032/32332 and Intel 386. All of them had facts speaking for them and others speaking against. While the NS processor was clearly the best designed of these three (very orthogonally) , a lack of software - especially a good C++ compiler - ruled out this processor for the task at hand. If I remember well the FPU had some minor problems too. The Motorolla - as the second best designed - too had a problem mainly with software, there was no compiler with sufficient accuracy, at least at acceptable cost.  The FPU was also a somewhat weak point. The Intel (the so called IBM-PC, because IBM selected this processor out of the three) had for long time a really bad reputation at computer insiders because the transition from the 8-bit world over 16bit to 32bit was a very painful process with this processor for programers. It was over years one single nightmare. I only cite A.Tannenbaum who spoke of a "braindamaged architecture". But what spoke in this case for the Intel processor was that its FPU worked internally not with 64 bits but with 80 bits, an advantage that could be crucial for this problem.  So when in 1985 the first acceptable Intel processor appeared, the Intel 386, a first version of a program that could simulate our planetary system was on my agenda. A good compiler was available with the Zortech V1(later V2/3).  But the program was not really usefull, because although the program worked only in 2d it took ages to calculate even a 2 or 3 body simulation. A downgrade from 'C++' to 'C' was no solution. It was not much faster. So again I had to wait. The introduction of the FPU which was announced at the same time as the processor was delayed by 2 years. And when it was finally available in 1987  it had a lot of bugs (as the other FPU's at that time also, e.g, problems with infinity ), which made it necessary to write complicated test software to rule out these errors and write code to avoid the errors. This again made the program really slow. So essentially not before the 486  in 1989/90   it was possible to write a half way useful program, because for the required acuracy a FPU was absolutely mandatory. But now there showed up problems with the vga-cards. Some were extremely slow (Oak-Cards, WD), some had driver problems (you had to write the drivers by yourself for higher resolutions..), some had unacceptable limitations. After long long testing issues the Tseng ET3000  proved acceptable, but was still slow. Finally in 1991 arrived the ET4000 with acceptable speed, so that extensive testing of the program was possible.  So in mid 91 it was clear that the program delivered stable results. I had tested a multitude of data from different sources and there was no doubt on the solar orbit that the program showed.

One last point should be mentioned which seems to be not understood by many who also tried to solve the problem: the program is a Dos-Program. And under Dos any running program has the whole processor (and FPU!) for its calculations alone. There is no task switcher, no dispatcher, no scheduler, no counters, no services, no background tasks, no indexer, no...... To give you a notion: do a ctrl-alt-del. (You will see around 40 programs running.) Yes, the inner workings of a multi-task/multi-user-system is today for a phycisist or mathematician as essential as has been for centuries the intime knowledge of a slide rule, integral calculus, series expansion, differentiation, matrix/vector calculation..... (I have written a book on it, so it is for me unfair easy to state this). The same is true for the compiler that you use. Although compilers are very mature these days(2009), there are still some trap-doors to fall in. The only drawback in writing a program like this under Dos was that you had to write your 'graphical environment' completely by yourself. And without graphical output such programs are really hard to debug.

I never was very ambitious and had no fear that someone would outwit me, so I told freely all my friends the results the program delivers.

I had during the whole 1980s a study group together with many scientists from DESY, our local large scale accelerator for particle physics research here in Hamburg which works in very tight cooperation and exchange in manpower with the large scale accelerator at CERN in Geneva. They were just then developing for their own accelerator and the accelerator at CERN a 68.000 system for the detectors and my own computer company had developped in the beginning 1980s a Z80/Z800/Z8000 system and a NS16032/32332 system with comparable performance. At those times it was absolutely open who was going to make the race. And since the whole hardware at those times posed with all those ASIC's a lot of timing problems we exchanged our experiences to get around those bugs. The same was true for software, but even worse, there simply was no software for the new processors. You had to start from ground up. This changed a lot in the end - 1980s.

This study groop ended in the late 1980s but I had won some friends there. So it was quite naturally that they were under the first that I informed of the results that my program delivered: that the sun orbits around the gravitational center of our planetary system. "Incredibly, had they really forgotten to calculate this" was the most heard comment. And since astro physics has not the best reputation  under particle physicist (unjustified as you can read on the history of the n-body-problem) I don't repeat the further comments here. So this news spread very quickly in whole DESY and in CERN in Geneva too. Telephone lines turned red hot for some minutes.

But I had also shown to some other friends of mine(all physicists) the results of my program of which at least one seemed he wanted to get undeserved merits afterwards. So I got to admit that I send my letter to the physics institutes a little bit hasty.

I can't recall for sure when the site sunorbit.net and sunorbit.de were commited under my name. I remembered 2002 but there are links in the net which tell that it already existed in March 2001. It seems that it was even earlier comited, but I can't tell. (Just found the beginning of my sites on my harddisks: it was a homepage on Compuserve and shortly after on AOL in 1998. But the exact content is no more reconstructable.)

The same is true for the abandonment. I think it was in 2007. I wanted to try out free providers. It was a desaster. Half of the time my websites were out of reach because of server down times. Search engines don't visit you anymore and you get totally forgotten in the net. This seems to be due to the fact that on these servers a great deal of the websites are not finished, are rudimentary 'under construction' sites with lots of links going to nowhere land and sheer garbage sites. Often even the index is not installed correctly so that these sites look like old ftp-sites from 1990. It seems these free sites are sorted out systematically by search engines. BTW Google has till today not indexed my free sites!

But since my old sites sunorbit.net and sunorbit.de  where now taken by someone else, I couldn't change back.

Finally in December 2009 the guys who had occupied  my sites gave up and I could take them over again(9.of dec 09).

Download the program here: gravity.zip download .dat file

Please be aware that this is no Windows-program! 1990/91 there existed no Windows(or Windows 3.0 which was useful for nothing)! It may function under the Dos-prompt of Windows, but no guarantee given! Be aware that even under Dos there is no guarantee that the program works! When this program was written, the newest VGA-cards were WD Paradise, ET3000 and OAK-cards! There are even some functions which for sure won't work with todays DOS/Windows, because the function-calls have changed (eg the write-comand.) I never reworked the program because I consider it a document.

Please use your own data for the .dat file. The .dat file changed a lot, because very different simulations have been accomplished with the program.

Change in old_eng.htm: On 13.April 2010 I took some of the harsh formulations out of old_eng.htm - without changing the content I hope. In foreign languages it is not always easy to judge the exact meaning of an expression. So it's easy to cross the borders to insulting expressions  where you only wanted to make a yoke.

By stressing the new facts I omitted the matter of course in some descriptions which I considered that much self evident that it is not necessary mentioning: gravitational forces inside a celestial body. It should be self evident and not necessary mentioning, that the gravitatonal forces heat a celestial body, whereby the gravitational forces in the center are almost zero (in contrast to fusion theory which assumes the strongest forces here. ). This is because of the simple fact that in the case of a sphere the forces at the center neutralize. This is basic math and needs no proof. So in all the descriptions where it is not expressively mentioned this is implied: If you move inwards a celestial body the gravitational forces continually grow and than get less and less the more you approach the center. This is one of the most basic considerations which is in all descriptions presumed .

The analogy in electrical terms is induction and self-induction.

2.8.2010 uploaded the already 2002 announced additional arguments that solar energy results out of tidal forces: global_warming.htm or klimawandel.htm(german) If physics waits another 20 years till the here described is acknowledged: I have still more arguments in the drawer of my desk.

It's incredible: by putting from time to time a little error on my pages the vistor count goes up and up...

Finally....

Apologies for using so many bracketed sentences, but footnotes are not usual in the net