Simulation tests gravity of other planets
Video surprises Twitter users
Cars in free fall: Curious simulation explains the different gravitational pulls of the sun, Jupiter and Co.
On Earth the chariot is destroyed, but on the Moon or Pluto it could survive the free fall without much damage.
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When astronauts are in space, they float through their station. Because there they do not feel the effects of gravity, which pulls them down on the earth towards the center of the earth. In the solar system, gravity determines the orbits of the celestial bodies around the sun. Other planets and moons also have a gravitational force, but they differ from Earth’s. This leads, for example, to astronauts becoming lightweights on the moon.
And if people or objects were in free fall on Venus, Mars and Co., the consequences would be different than on our home planet.
This is shown in a strange and at the same time amazing way by a video that was circulated on Twitter and has been viewed millions of times. It shows cars falling in free fall onto a road divider with the different gravitational forces of the celestial bodies in the solar system. Even though the cars look amazingly real, the video is a simulation that was created in the video game “BeamNG.drive”. The driving simulation from the German developer studio Beam NG is known for simulating realistic vehicle physics. The result looks like this:
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Gravity: The gravitational pull of the sun is 28 times that of the earth
The video shows: The gravitational pull of the sun is enormous – if that of the earth were just as strong, the car would be completely destroyed on impact. That’s because the Sun’s gravitational pull is about 28 times that of Earth’s. The gravity on Pluto, on the other hand, is so low that the car would land on the lane divider at an extremely slow speed without suffering major damage.
But how can BeamNG.drive even simulate what influence the gravitational force would have on the free fall of the cars? Gravity is always given in meters per square second (m/s²). Tech-savvy users can change the settings of the driving simulation and replace the default value, which corresponds to the gravity of the earth, with that of the other celestial bodies. To do this, you must enter one of these values:
- Earth: 9.807 m/s²
- Sun: 274 m/s²
- Moon: 1.62 m/s²
- Jupiter: 24.79 m/s²
- Neptune: 11.15 m/s²
- Saturn: 10.4 m/s²
- Venus and Uranus: 8.87 m/s²
- Mars: 3.721 m/s²
- Mercury: 3.7m/s²
- Pluto: 0.62 m/s²
Such simulations are popular with BeamNG.drive. Previous videos by users showed how far cars jump with different gravitational pulls when driving over a ramp. They don’t get very far with the gravitation of the sun:
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The results of the simulations amazed the Twitter and YouTube users. “Pluto is like a big trampoline park!” wrote a Twitter user of the latest simulation. “The sun simulation was quite unexpected,” another user commented on the YouTube video.
