Watch a Million Particles Collide

What happens when you give 1,000,000 particles their own gravity and spring repulsion and send them out to play? Watch the video above and find out.

This was created by David Moore, a self-taught computer programmer, aspiring physicist and student at San Diego Miramar College. It’s a custom code made with SDL/C++ and 8 days of render time. According to David there’s a bug at the end “where particles can get arbitrarily high energy… but before that it’s very physically accurate!”

It’s fascinating to watch the attraction process take place — one might envision a similar process occurring in the early Universe with the formation of the first galaxies and galactic clusters out of a hot, uniform state. Plus it’s great to see young talented minds like David’s working on such projects for fun!

There just might be hope for us after all.

Video by David Moore