1. The developers state it uses Newtonian n-body calculations. I can verify they are doing this as I've been writing n-body simulators for 30 years and if they were not, their simulations would be wildly inaccurate.
Can you clarify for the lay person exactly what this means?
If you want to understand Newtonian n-body simulations, the wiki page is a good read at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-body_simulationAn n-body simulation is just using Newtons formulas on a set of bodies, like the solar system or stars. It's how most gravity simulations are done, including when NASA plans space missions.
2. Opening the simulator settings shows that G is set to 0.0000000000667 Newtons(m/kg)^2 which is also correct.
Fantastic.
Now, what portion of the galaxy (according to the developers) is most responsible the generation of and use of that figure you provided for this possibly accurate (but definitely incomplete) rendering?
The gravitational constant is measured in a variety of ways, none of which have anything to do with the galaxy. It's simply a number that indicates how much matter is attracted to itself. You can read about it here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_constantThe time frame is about 687 days, as that is how long Mars takes to orbit the sun once.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
3. I only included the inner bodies in the gif as if I zoomed out to show the outer ones the inner ones would be too small to see. You can't fit the whole solar system into a small gif due to the scale. But the full simulation has all the planets, a hundred or so moons and several thousand asteroids and comets, I can watch it all.
Well, I find that interesting.
The gif I presented had all the bodies.
Plus, tell me what you find visually different between the way things are modeled in each.
The image you posted has shrunk the orbits of all the planets so they all fit into the animation. In reality, the orbits of the outer plants is vastly larger than the inner ones. So if you show them all, the inner planets are all shrunk down so small it's hard to make them out.
I included a screensho of the whole solar system, and you can see that it's very hard to see any detail about the inner planets without magnifying. Plus, the orbits of the outer planets are so long compared to the inner planets that the animation doesn't look as good.
My images are accurate in size and orbital speed and so don't look as nice as the one you linked. That one is meant to show the concept and messes with both scales to fit everything into a cool looking fast moving image with over-sized planets so people can recognize the Sun and Saturn and Earth.