Published 2022-12-22

Univercell

Invisible forces, celestial organisms

« For we truly see many things detach and cast off matter, not only from their core, but frequently as well from their surfaces, including colour. And this commonly occurs with awnings—yellow and red and dusky blue coverings—which when stretched out across large theatres and spread everywhere on poles and timbers, flutter and flap around, for their tint affects the audience below them on the benches, the whole appearance of the scenery and men and women below, forcing them to quiver in their colours. » -- Lucretius, "De Rerum Natura", liber IV [74-90].

Lucretius was a Roman philosopher, a very curious mind of the first century BC who is known for the philosophical essay "De Rerum Natura" (On the Nature of Things). In this work he describes Epicurean theories about nature and the universe in an impressive style, using impeccable metrics to structure the entire Latin text as a long poem.

Using only intuition and logical reasoning, Lucretius gained precise insights into the nature of the constituents of the entire universe. The analogies presented in "De Natura Rerum", although simple, were made more than 2,000 years before modern scientific instruments allowed humanity to observe the smallest things such as electron flux, molecules, and cells, as well as macroscopic objects like distant galaxies and nebulae.

Large portions of the original poem were lost, and the remaining fragments, written in ancient latin, were translated multiple times at different points in history. Each translation interprets the original text with the fashion of the time. There are many translations available and I strongly encourage the reader to take a look !

All the constituents of the universe are arranged by invisible forces. "Invisible" because we can't see what physicists call "force", only its consequences. For all what matters, we ignore the causes.

All what is left is to enjoy the consequences !

Read more about "Dust, points, and particles" here : https://www.fxhash.xyz/article/neu(t)rons-spacetime-fabric

Univercell experiment

This live animation is designed to be experienced fullscreen on a 16/9 screen at least full HD, and needs a recent (>2015) graphic card (GPU) to run smoothly at its cruise speed of 60FPS.

Click "project" then "open" to see the live version in full window, or click HERE.

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Unlimited duration animation (randomized cinematic sequences parameters)
Written in Javascript and GLSL
Uses WebGL thanks to the excellent three.js library
More than 2.5 millions particles
Particles system forming two unique and deterministic generative compositions
Customizable color range with URL parms
An infinity of initial conditions leading to an infinity of possible outputs ( ℵ ω)
Dynamic point size (best fit for wide 16/9-16/10 screens), supports up to 8K+ .

Controls

At every moment, available in all modes:

Press "SPACE" on the keyboard to capture a screenshot of the current frame. 🤳

Capture will be same format ratio as current view and maximum 1920x1080. Saves as PNG.

Settings (URL modifiers)

Empiric mode

Add &empiric=on to turn off the documentary and enable manual exploration of the Univercell. For an example, click here.

In this mode :

Press "R" on the keyboard to enable automatic rotation
Use pinch/wheel to zoom in/out
Right click + drag to pan

Demo mode

Cinematics sequences last 20 seconds. Activate the "demo mode" with &demo=on to reduce the cycle duration to 5 seconds. For the impatient ones or to make a quick video. For an example, click here.

Random sequence order

By default the documentary mode follows a script that cycles through 6 animations. By activating the random mode sequences are presented in a deterministic random order.

Add &random=on to enable this mode. For an example, click here.