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Posted by shashanktomar 10/31/2025

Show HN: Strange Attractors(blog.shashanktomar.com)
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.

804 points | 78 commentspage 2
tannerjames711 11/1/2025|
Thank you for sharing. This really inspired me to check out three.js. This website of yours might be one of the more beautiful things on the internet.
__MatrixMan__ 11/1/2025||
It would be so much fun to use these as a setting for some kind of gaming experience. Like, I wanna hide behind parts of these and pop around a corner and blast my friend with a laser. Or to race gocarts along the surface of one, or I dunno, something frogger-esque to get a feel for the directionality of the flows... I love how they look, but I need more interaction to get a feel for the thing.
kloudignite 11/5/2025||
I stumbled upon attractors several years ago and ended up making a whole desktop application for rendering animations :)

https://youtu.be/8ttGBReE5gg

shashanktomar 11/5/2025|
This is so cool
dmarinus 11/1/2025||
very nice, if you want to know more of the history of chaos I recommend the following book: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos%3A_Making_a_New_Science?...
virgil_disgr4ce 11/1/2025|
It's a nice coincidence to find this post on HN today as I JUST finished reading Gleick's book. But it was the audiobook version, which I immediately realized was not going to be very effective if I can't see any images or equations. And so it's perfect timing to see this outstanding interactive visualization!
Figs 11/1/2025||
The demo makes some nice spirals on the ends. They look like galaxies with the rendering.

It reminded me of one of my (cranky) musings from back in college about galaxy formation and whether they were more like tossed pizzas (i.e. spreading out) than like whirlpools getting sucked in.

slicktux 11/1/2025||
Lorenz Equations and Chua Circuits probed with an analog oscilloscope is mesmerizing! Great videos of a Chua Circuit being probed with an analog scope… Also, plugging the circuit to a speaker via AUX port gives white noise ;)
ilovefood 11/1/2025||
Super cool and well done. They are much better in 3D! :)

I made a similar experiment a while ago and randomized the parameters. Given it's difficult to stumble on a stable arrangement, I turned it into a small game to find pretty ones: (big disclaimer: this involves NFT tech, please skip if you're against that sort of stuff) https://karimjedda.com/symmetry-in-chaos-my-first-generative...

eps 11/1/2025||
Mesmerizing stuff.

Can you allow changing attractor control constants without resetting the sim? E.g. going from 0.19 to 0.21 in Thomas while it's already in a stable state.

It's be interesting to see what'll happen.

tmshapland 11/1/2025|
Beautiful. Reminds me of starling murmurations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4f_1_r80RY
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