Project Genesis

self-gravitating light · structure from one rule

A near-uniform gas of light — thousands of photons — under a single rule: energy bends light toward energy (light's own energy gravitates, per E=mc² + general relativity). Watch whether cosmic structure — knots, filaments, halos — condenses out of an almost featureless start. A toy to test the idea that focused light behaves like dark matter.

What you're watching. Each frame: the photons' energy is smeared onto a field; each photon is nudged up the energy gradient (gravity toward mass). Tiny initial ripples get amplified — the same gravitational instability that grows real cosmic structure. Turn gravity up and add a little cooling, and light clumps into a web of halos from near-nothing.

The honest part (this is a test, not a proof). Flip on relativistic (constant c) and the clumps struggle to hold — that's the real problem your theory must beat: dark matter is cold (slow), but light is the fastest thing there is, so it resists clumping. "Cooling" here stands in for whatever would make light behave cold. Also: interference/focusing concentrates energy, it doesn't create it from nothing — total energy is conserved. This sim explores the mechanism honestly; where it clumps and where it refuses to is exactly the science.

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