Using scientific software, even on Linux, for "scientific" worldbuilding

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Hello there,

Has anyone ever used or uses scientific software, perhaps on Linux, for scientific study?

For example, as a hobby, I wanted to “build” a solar system around Delta Pavonis, but perhaps based on real data, and perhaps scientific software, like some software that simulates the climatology of exoplanets, also based on the star they orbit, or the simulation of geology and plate tectonics. Basically, things like that.

However, since I don’t work in the scientific field or have any expertise in the field, I’m not familiar with either the software or how to use it.

I rely on AI. So far, I’ve generated maps with World Orogen (browser-based), and I’ve managed to use them with World Engine for an initial simulation, although WE uses terrestrial reference values, so for the type of data I’m looking for, it’s not suitable; I need something that simulates exoplanets.

To do this, I tried ExoPlaSim, both running it with micromamba and Docker, but I couldn’t get any simulations to work. It kept crashing, so I gave up.

Now, I’m trying to run a similar simulation using the Julia programming language, which is used in various fields. I’ve created a script using AI with the characteristics of the planet, star, and moon I want to simulate. For now, I’m struggling with various errors, although I’ve had a couple of successes with this one, but they’re not definitive.

So, are any of you familiar with scientific software that’s useful for what I’d like to do?

Unfortunately, since I’m not an expert, my options are quite limited.

PS: For now, the planet I want to simulate is suitable for life, but has never developed it. Therefore, it is an abiotic planet, meaning it has no life, but it does have a magnetic field, an atmosphere, and liquid water.

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Hmm, probably not what you are looking for but may be of interest to you, Universe Sandbox and Terra Firma 2

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I love universe sandbox. i dont have it myself but i watch many videos of it.
you can do so many cool things with it. like use venus and put earths atmosphere on it and water, see what happens. or replace the sun with something else like proxima centauri, put earth into the habitable zone and slowly watch earth get tidally locked because of it. there way too many things you can do.

This guy has over 200 videos of what you can do with it, here one excample

4

Yer I have it but I can only run the basic simulations on my current hardware, it is very cool and fun to play around with. Has heaps of inbuilt scenarios.

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Well, I have Universe Sandbox 2. It might give you an idea, but you can also set things up arbitrarily, and if you want to make a rocky planet the size of Jupiter, no one’s stopping you. The largest rocky planet ever discovered so far is supposed to be Kepler-10c, which has a radius about twice that of Earth and a mass 17 times greater than Earth, but is still significantly smaller than Jupiter.

Furthermore, there should be some sort of theoretical limit: it’s believed that rocky planets cannot reach sizes comparable to Jupiter’s due to gravity; beyond a certain mass, a celestial body begins to attract and retain enormous amounts of hydrogen and helium, inevitably turning into a gas giant (like Jupiter or Saturn) rather than a rocky planet.

I’d like to stick to scientific laws, and even if I’m building a system, effectively arbitrarily, it must be scientifically realistic. Hence, the simulations must be as well.

My hardware is pretty decent: I have an AMD Ryzen 7 5700X, 64 GB of RAM, and an AMD Radeon RX 6750 XT with 12 GB of VRAM. On this PC, I run Arch, EOS, and Debian 13.

Terra Firma 2 seems to be closer to what I’m looking for.

For example, I’d looked at GPlates, for simulating tectonic plates. But since I don’t have a map of these plates, you have to do it manually. That’s probably beyond what I can do.

6

You’re probably looking for (older) game engines with realistic physics.

For instance, FreeSpace or Freelancer from the early 2000s uses a hyper-realistic physics engine, where the programmer was (is) a physics major (not just an artistic game developer), the game focuses on ship-to-ship combat in space, so torpedoes (rockets) could not only fly at its maximum thrust speed (some upper limit parameter x), but fly even faster, if the space ship was at boost (x + y*).

Now, which game engine suits you best, I can’t tell, but I’m open to discuss and look for the (de)merits with you. Many of the game engines of the 2000s are much better than today’s iterations, mainly because of the hyper-realistic physics engines, the gaming community makes YT videos about that: why buildings and cars get destroyed by crashes and gun fires in the 2004, but not anymore in 2024 … ?!

As for Julia and simulation: the typical scientific simulation is a Monte Carlo simulation that usually happens in spreadsheet format, that is a Julia matrix or separate vectors. Happy to discuss further … that’s it for now.

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If you are using KDE, have you tried to use KStars application?

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Not exactly. At the moment I’m not looking for graphics engines with realistic physics, but more scientific simulators, where you enter data and have a result.

The graphics engine with realistic physics, maybe I could use it in the end, for a visual display, after having the data from the simulators in hand. But not before.

Well, I’m struggling with my lack of knowledge, actually.

I’ve used ai to create scripts from the data I have about what I want to simulate, some scripts work. But they don’t give realistic results in my opinion. Seasonal and annual results virtually identical for the most part. And textual log with little information, when I specified that I had the opposite. I haven’t been able to figure it out yet.

Julia works for me, unlike ExoPlaSim (which crashes both via mircomamba and docker). But not being an expert even in programming makes it difficult.

I’m trying to see if I can set up and run Rocke3D, which is a three-dimensional general circulation model (GCM) developed by NASA (the GISS: Goddard Institute for Space Studies).

It is specifically designed to simulate the climates of rocky planets, both within the Solar System (such as Mars, Venus, Titan or ancient Earth) and for exoplanets.

The ROCKE-3D model produces output data in 3D format, but is not real-time interactive visualization software like a graphics engine.

I’m trying to install it with the help of ai. We’ll see if I can.

I use KDE, both on EOS, Arch, and Debian 13. This program is nice, but I already have something similar: Stellarium.

It might be useful to see what “sky” you’d see from Delta Pavonis.

But I’m looking for a more scientific simulator, where you enter various data and it gives you a result based on scientific laws (climatology, tectonics, and so on). Obviously, not all software does everything, so you’ll probably end up using different software.

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