Raymond Chou, Final Project Draft **Equations and formatting willbe added to the final draft a 9 wel peau These @ Sharf beekeg voaud Stel iy , ifm For as long as humans have roamed the Earth, they have gazed up at the night sky, studying”) the positions of the numerous visible celestial objects. Among these objects include our own O4fax+ ‘sun, as well as the other planets that inhabit our Solar System. Interestingly enough, the distinction between planets of our Solar System and the stars of other galaxies were made vory \o J, early on in human history; the Ancient Greeks knew of first few planets (up to Saturn) [need to yr?" ite, will do so later], and had constructed a Geocentric model of the Universe. (Ptolemy). \usk! A series of breakthroughs ied to the discoveries of Johannes Kepler in the early 1600's and his three laws of planetary motion: 1) the orbit of the planets about their sun was in the shape of an ellipse, with the sun at one of the foci, 2) the radius of the planet sweeps out equal areas in ‘equal time intervals, and 3) the square of the period of the orbit was proportional to the cube of the semimajor axis of the ellipse. These findings would later be confirmed by Sir Isaac Newton In 1687 in his work Principia Mathematica, wherein his Universal law of gravity was first presented to the world. (Will cite) ~=*The law of Universal Gravitation states that any two bodies in space will attract each other with a force that is proportional to the product of the magnitude of their masses and the inverse square of the distance between them. Traditionally, as in most entry-level Physics textbooks, when the orbit of Earth is calculated about the sun, the effects of the other planets are typically ignored for simplicity (as there is no "simple" algebraic solution for the N-body problem, where N is greater than 2). However, the effects of the other planets are not negligible, as large masses such as Jupiter may have a slight effect on Earth, should the two planets get close enough. This leads to the formulation of the N-body problem: how does a series of N-bodies in space move if one takes into account all of their gravitational effects on each other? =——Avith the advent of computers, simulations can now be run on computers in order to obtain numerical solutions for the N-body problem. Algorithms for numerical solutions to cifferential ‘equations, such as Euler-Cromer, 4th-Order Runga-Kutta, Velocity Verlet, eto can be used to | py” determine the paths that such planets take, though only accurate to a finitely small time step. \gO bn the ever-so-reliable Wikipedia page discussing this topic, there is a claim, “All these more advanced methods easily allow for Solar System calculations with a stepsize At of 10 days and yet yield satisfactory results” [Wil cite], where the methods described include a given algorithm that appears to be a modified version of Euler's method, the 4th-Order Runga Kutta method, as well as the Taylor Series method for solving differential equations. There is no citation for this claim, and we shall determine whether a step size of 10 days will indeed yield “satisfactory” results. hreik — pred METHODS In order to test whether a seemingly large step size of 10 days will yield "satisfactory" results, one must first define “satisfactory.” We shall simulate the N-body problem (in this case, 9; though Pluto is no longer considered a planet, one can never be fo0 thorough; however, theasteroid belt was omitted due to lack of processing power and simplicity) using the methods described above and check for the foflowing criteria: — feu “The ofbits of the planets are stable Ha © The periods of the planets align with data obtained from NASA The eccentricities of the planets align with data obtained from NA @&_The gFaiitaionat/potential energies ofthe planets are nonincréasing.y| : — es ee orbit vy The claim made on Wikipedia requires us to test for the above criteria using three different en-cdeuly methods: the 4th order Runga-Kutta algorithm, the modified Euler method presented, andthe fe« #4, modified Taylor Series approach. In this simulation, we will examine the former two methods, as Lb ibef the last one was not described in sufficient detail on the Wikipedia page. baegy ds Maha ng? Euler's method is a very simple numerical solution to a differential equation; t simply computes.” the new position of an object using linear approximations based on the velocity of the object at a given old position. The modified method presented on Wikipedia attempts to improve upon the Euler method by taking the original output of Euler's method, computing the acceleration both at that point and the original point, and using the average acceleration to find an average velocity, Which is then used to compute the new position. (All algorithms can be found in the appendix that | will later add) ‘The Runga-Kutta 4th Order method is a method that also improves upon the Euler method, this, time by taking a ‘weighted average" of four different “guesses.” Each guess is obtained by taking the slope between the origitial point and the expected point (that is, the result that would have been obtained using Euler’s method), picking a point somewhere on the oblained line, and then repeating the process, four times in this case. A detailed description of the exact method used can be found in the appendix, (That | will add) a) Which each iteration, the energies of the planets will be computed as well, so that we can chee! if their energies are conserved. UN af- Dn colle, is hi ble dea x CNeige Should be. Consever|