Universe Sandbox 2 is a universe sim game you can get on steam. I just did. It's right up my alley. As a huge fan of astronomy I found it quite interesting. In it you can build solar systems, terraform planets and when you get bored of them you can destroy your creation in hillarious ways. That feature is what makes this game so great...
I got into the game after I searched for the phrase "IS Jupiter a brown dwarf?" on google. I came across a video by "I Decleare Sheninagames" doing hillarious things to the solar system in the game. The game simulates orbits of the planets based on their gravity, but not just that, It also simulates temperature and climate as well.. So If you launch an asteroid at the earth, the earth will superheat and eliminate all life from it... If you make the sun have less mass than it has now, the earth and other planets will orbit further away and get colder. Earth will freeze and go through Ice ages due to this. If you make the sun go supernova it boils all planets to death, etc... Things such as mass, size, temperature, composition are easily changeable in the sim so you can mess with stuff royally and end the solar system in creative ways.
In my first 6 hours of playing the game (I averaged 3 hours per day during 2 days), I did the following:
1) Launched the enormous star Betelgeuse at the outer solar system
Result: All the inner planets got flung out of the solar system, earth froze to death due to this
2) Launched Betelgeuse at the sun
Result: The whole Solar system got pulled INTO Betelgeuse making to Supernova
3) Replaced the planet Jupiter with the Supermassive Blackhole Sagittarius A*
Result: This was a riot... Sagittarius A* took over as the thing all the planets orbited and they all got really eccentric orbits.. Earth and Jupiter Froze to death and then got sucked into the black hole.. The sun became an orbiting object that orbited the Black Hole rather than the thing all other planets orbited...
4) Tried to make a solar system where all the planets orbited the sun right next to it in the same exact orbit...
Result: All planets boiled to death and got flung into the sun
5) Did the same thing as 4 but made all the orbits much more eccentric...
Result: All the planets boiled to death and jupiter became a 15 cm large gas giant! WTF!
6) Made Jupiter a Brown dwarf by increasing it's mass to 75 Jupiter masses:
Result: The Planets orbits changed dramatically, Jupiter's moons collided with it..
7) Replaced the Sun with the Star Vega
Result : Planets all got a very eccentric orbit. Earth melted to a temperature of 1500 Farenheit while
it was near Vega, and froze to death while further away...
8) Made all planets but earth and Pluto Brown dwarfs:
Result: Totally fucked up the solar system... All orbits became eccentric and the whole thing just became a huge mess.. All orbits were on a random plane. Earth boiled to death then froze to death!
9) Launch Ceres at the Earth at lightspeed
Result: Destroys half of earth
10) Launch venus at the moon at 15 times the speed of light...
Result : Made earth hit the moon causing half of the earth to melt
11) Launch a pulsar at the outer edge of the solar system
Result: Messed up the orbits of the outer solar system only... This one wasn't too bad
12) Launch the Pulsar at the sun
Result : Fucks up all orbits, makes earth freeze to death and then makes the sun go Supernova...
13) Delete all planets but Jupiter and then make them and all their moons orbit Jupiter at a really
close distance...
Result : Causes all the planets to get flung outside Jupiter. Earth and mars get destroyed. Solar system
fucked up royally...
The results of my "experiments" were quite cruel, but funny at the same time. Earth almost never survived well. Humanity died miserably in 90% of these... And that was my intention. See the intention of this video game was to build a solar system. But I don't think that's as fun as destroying one... For that reasons, I love this game... This post will be updated to talk about my future exploits, so stay tuned...
