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Show HN: Strange Attractors

(blog.shashanktomar.com)
745 points shashanktomar | 1 comments | 31 Oct 25 23:23 UTC | HN request time: 0.209s | source

I went down the rabbit hole on a side project and ended up building this: Strange Attractors(https://blog.shashanktomar.com/posts/strange-attractors). It’s built with three.js.

Working on it reminded me of the little "maths for fun" exercises I used to do while learning programming in early days. Just trying things out, getting fascinated and geeky, and being surprised by the results. I spent way too much time on this, but it was extreme fun.

My favorite part: someone pointed me to the Simone Attractor on Threads. It is a 2D attractor and I asked GPT to extrapolate it to 3D, not sure if it’s mathematically correct, but it’s the coolest by far. I have left all the params configurable, so give it a try. I called it Simone (Maybe).

If you like math-art experiments, check it out. Would love feedback, especially from folks who know more about the math side.

1. evanb ◴[01 Nov 25 13:02 UTC] No.45781318[source]▶
> A small change in the parameter a can lead to vastly different particle trajectories and the overall shape of the attractor. Change this value in the control panel and observe the butterfly effect in action.

I think this is slightly inaccurate. The butterfly effect is about the evolution of two nearby states in phase space into well-separated states. But the parameter a is not a state. To see the butterfly effect by changing a we would need to let the system settle down, give the parameter a small change, and then change it back. The evolution during the changed time acts as a perturbation on states.

Instead, showing that the attractor changes qualitatively as a function of the parameter is more akin to a phase transition.