I wrote Gravitorium for fun, and to explore some ideas I had for science fiction stories. "What would happen if a black hole passed through the solar system?" "What would it be like to live on a planet with two suns?" I'm a long-time science fiction fan, and I enjoy playing with ideas.

So the prime purpose of Gravitorium is to let me and you play with ideas about gravity and gravitational systems. While it's not intended to be a highly accurate solar system simulator, at low speeds its accuracy is really pretty good, at least for modest periods of time (a hundred years or so). And it is certainly good enough to get a good general impression of the likely course of events in a particular planetary system. And, best of all, it lets you "play universe creator" and build your own systems.

Science teachers will find Gravitorium an excellent tool to develop demonstrations of planetary motions, or to allow students to use themselves to learn how gravity works.