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Devlog10 Now, Superposition is installable on all devices with added landscape mode for phone,with glowing choices and choices which make sound and penrose diagrams has also been added to it,i hope u will enjoy it . Upcoming features Adding speedrun mode,daily challenges and more (using cosmic engineering to decide )😂
Superposition's audio and visuals now react live to the story, not just hardcoded per scene. Black hole disk color shifts in real time (orange, blue, white-hot, purple, teal) depending on which scene you're in. Audio is generated live too: drones, an organ chord, a sawtooth shimmer, all Web Audio API, no files. Also shipped 6 endings, a leaderboard, and a Physics Codex.
Audio and color were easily the most challenging part. Both had to smoothly interpolate as the narrative deepens instead of snapping between fixed states, so transitions feel like they're moving with the physics, not cutting between presets.
Proud that the audio and visuals aren't decoration, they track the actual state of the black hole. Same job the equations are doing.
To test: play a few scenes back to back to notice the shifts, unlock a few Codex terms as you go, and check the leaderboard once you hit an ending.
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A big thanks to everyone who reviewed my project — I read all the reviews and worked on it. I fixed all the spelling errors in the backend, increased the audio of the black hole, updated the landing page and README.md, and the most exciting thing that has been added to Superposition — the leaderboard!
Once again, thanks to everyone!
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DEVLOG #8— black hole that breathes, two new endings, and audio that falls with you. stayed up again with also waking up early. worth it.the black hole disk color now reacts live to whatever scene you’re in. orange on approach, shifting toward blue through the quantum scenes, white-hot for the information paradox, purple for kerr-newman, teal for the new universe ending. not hardcoded per scene — it lerps smoothly every frame toward the target color so you actually see it transition, not snap.two new endings. The Boundary State — stay on the AdS₂ boundary, become the CFT, dissolve into the hologram. The New Universe — burn through the firewall, pass the cauchy horizon, tunnel into a new exterior the meissner gap protected you through. 6 endings total now, not 4.then audio. this was the big one. four layers — sub drone, mid drone an octave up with slight detune for thickness, a triangle-wave organ (C3 + G3, the interstellar chord), and a sawtooth shimmer through a lowpass filter for that ethereal high end. all generated live with Web Audio API. no files. ever.23 scene configs. each one tunes drone frequency, gain, organ volume, shimmer pitch, filter cutoff, all lerping toward the target every 100ms so scene transitions feel like the sound is actually moving, not cutting. act I is quiet. act III builds — by scene 20 (the firewall) the drone is almost a growl. the classical ending drops to near silence. unitarity opens up airy and bright. the remnant ending freezes — pulse rate hits zero, nothing moves, because nothing should move in an eternal horizon.the sound design is doing the same job the disk color does. it’s not decoration. it’s another channel telling you where you are in the physics.what’s next: leaderboard — track which ending players reach most, live global stats pulled from the backend. and a codex — a physics glossary that unlocks term by term as you move through scenes, so by the end you’ve basically built your own reference sheet for everything from surface gravity to the no-cloning theorem.the quantum particle arc continues. 🫡
RishavOS is a quantum research WebOS I built in a single HTML file. It has three draggable windows — a Superposition launcher with an animated RN black hole in the background, a terminal where you can type rn 0.95 and get live κ, T_H and C(κ) from my actual paper's formulas, and a quantum clock. The unique feature is the decoherence particle system on the desktop — particles exist in superposition with ghost states drifting around them, click the desktop and they collapse, coherence drops to 0 and recovers over 3 seconds, same physics as my ISEF research. Hardest part was a duplicate variable declaration in the drag function that silently killed all JS — windows rendered but nothing worked. To test: type help in the terminal, try rn 0.99, drag windows from the titlebar, click the desktop to collapse particles.
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DEVLOG #3 — JS, debugging, and deployment
wrote all the JavaScript today. boot sequence, particle system, black hole canvas, terminal, clock, and window management — drag, resize, focus, minimize, maximize, hide.
hit a critical bug almost immediately after merging the JS. duplicate sx and sy declarations inside the drag() function — syntax error that silently killed every line of JS after it. windows rendered but nothing was interactive. took a while to spot because there was no console error thrown at the right line.
fixed that along with a handful of other issues: font-weigh missing the t so the boot title wasn’t bold, .tb-icon.hover was a class selector instead of a pseudo-class so taskbar hover never fired, .dot-x was missing the dot chaining so the green maximize button didn’t work, border-class typo in the cyan badge CSS, nested .dots div inside another .dots div in the clock window breaking the titlebar structure entirely, and the canvas id was particle in the HTML but particles in the JS so the particle system never initialized.
after fixing all that, deployed to Vercel. got a 404. the file was named RishavOS.html and Vercel looks for index.html at root by default. renamed the file and pushed again — deployed clean.
live at rishav-os.vercel.app.
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DEVLOG #2 — structure, styling, windowsgot the full HTML skeleton done today. no JS yet — just structure and CSS.started with the CSS variables. dark space palette — #03040a background, cyan #00d4ff, gold #f5c842, violet #a259ff. JetBrains Mono for everything terminal-facing, Space Grotesk for UI. both from Google Fonts.laid out the core systems: particle canvas fixed behind everything at z-index 0, desktop layer above it, taskbar pinned to the bottom with backdrop blur. window class with focused state (cyan border glow), hidden state, draggable titlebar, resize handle at bottom-right.boot screen CSS done — the big “RishavOS” title in cyan, loading bar that transitions from cyan to violet, status message underneath.then the three windows in HTML: Superposition launcher with the black hole canvas behind the content, terminal with input row, quantum clock. taskbar has icons for all three with the active dot indicator underneath.from the screenshot — windows are rendering but sitting center-screen stacked. positioning is off because the JS for drag/focus/layout hasn’t been written yet. that’s next session.what’s left: all the JS. boot animation, particle decoherence system, black hole canvas, window drag + resize + focus, terminal commands, clock ticker.
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DEVLOG #1 — boot, windows, particles
started from scratch today. single HTML file, no frameworks.
got the boot sequence working first — loading bar, status messages cycling through kernel init to desktop ready. takes about a second. sets the tone.
draggable windows next. three of them: Superposition launcher, a quantum terminal, and a clock widget. all drag, all resize from the bottom-right corner. window focus works — clicking a window brings it to front, title bar gets a cyan glow.
the thing i’m most happy with: the decoherence particle system on the desktop background. particles render in superposition — each one has two ghost positions offset from its core, connected by faint lines. they drift. click the desktop or hit the observe button on the clock and they collapse — ghosts vanish, coherence bar drops to 0%, then slowly recohere over a few seconds. the mechanic is trivial to implement but it’s the exact physics from the research. didn’t plan it that way. just followed the concept.
terminal is functional. rn 0.95 computes κ, T_H, and C(κ) live from the actual paper formulas (L = 2.1895×10⁻⁴). decoherence prints the scaling table. paper shows the DOI and key result.
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DEVLOG #7 — puzzles, spin, and branching that actually matterstwo new puzzles shipped today.Page Curve — scene 4B. the black hole is evaporating. your quantum state is either destroyed (Hawking’s original claim) or encoded in the radiation (unitarity). the Meissner Gap changes the calculation — near extremality, evaporation nearly stops. your information lingers at the horizon. neither lost nor free. a third option. quantum purgatory.drag the marker. find the Page time. where entanglement entropy peaks and turns — that’s where unitarity is restored. get it wrong and you stay in purgatory.Spin Stabilizer — scene 4D. the black hole is spinning now. this is not Reissner-Nordström. this is Kerr-Newman. spin parameter α couples to your code’s logical operators. ℒ_KN = 9.211×10⁻⁵. smaller than RN. Meissner suppression is even stronger for a spinning extremal black hole. tune α to stabilize your code. too much spin destabilizes it. too little wastes protection. find the sweet spot. lock it in.both puzzles now affect branching. solving vs failing leads to different scenes — not just different choices. the decisions mean something mechanically now.what’s next: ambient audio. deep space drone + slow organ, procedurally generated with Web Audio API, no files, shifts per scene as you fall deeper. and more branching.the Meissner Gap protects the Cauchy horizon too. didn’t plan that. just followed the physics. 🫡
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DEVLOG #6 — endings gallery, a puzzle, and 6 new scenesstayed up till late night and kept building.added an endings gallery. reach any of the 4 endings and you see all of them — locked ones show hints, unlocked ones show what actually happened to you. progress bar. localStorage so it remembers across sessions. the “all endings discovered” message says “the quantum particle arc is complete.” felt right.then the first mini puzzle. scene 6 — The Surface Code. you get a 4×4 grid of qubits. some are flipped. you have 20 seconds to tap and fix the errors before decoherence wins. it’s not decorative. surface codes are real QEC. nielsen & chuang chapter 8. the game is literally teaching it now. reach it by diving in at scene 1, then choosing to encode yourself in a surface code at scene 3.then 6 new scenes. scenes 16 through 21. entanglement webs. scrambling time. holographic self. hayden-preskill decoder. the AMPS firewall. beyond the singularity through a cauchy horizon. the RN inner horizon is unstable, except near extremality where κ → 0 suppresses mass inflation. the Meissner Gap protects the Cauchy horizon too. didn’t plan that. just followed the physics.21 scenes now. still 4 endings. more branching. the game is genuinely teaching graduate-level quantum gravity through choices.one thing that hit me — when i added the hayden-preskill decoder scene, i wrote “not a copy — you. but the no-cloning theorem means only one version can exist. the original must be destroyed.” and then gave the player the choice. that’s not drama. that’s actual physics. black hole complementarity is that uncomfortable.what’s next:two more puzzles coming. scene 9 — Information Paradox — you drag a marker to identify the Page time on the entanglement entropy curve. get it wrong and unitarity breaks. scene 11 — Kerr-Newman — tune the spin parameter α to stabilize your surface code. stability meter updates live. ℒ_KN shifts with every adjustment.puzzle outcomes will also affect branching. solving vs failing leads to different scenes, not just the same choices. the decisions will actually mean something mechanically, not just narratively.ambient audio is also coming. deep space drone layered with a slow organ, procedurally generated with Web Audio API, no files, shifts per scene as you fall deeper.the quantum particle arc continues. 🫡
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DEVLOG #5 — midnight and a physics sliderbefore the family function, laptop dies mid-debug. switched to phone, fixed the landing page, made sure nobody opens this to a blank screen. then left.came back. midnight. everyone asleep. opened the laptop and started on the physics slider.scenes 2, 3, 8, 9, 11 — drag the charge ratio q, watch κ, C(κ), and T_H update live. numbers from the actual paper. not decorative. more scenes coming.used Claude to get unstuck at points. not hiding it. but debugging till midnight after a family function — that part was just me.the stress, the discharged laptop, the phone fix, the midnight grind , i used to think that stuff was the obstacle. it’s actually just the process. uncomfortable and kind of lovely at the same time.more scenes in development. the quantum particle arc continues. 🫡
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real ones know i didn’t start here.last year i was coding a 2D black hole. flat. horizontal. literally just vibes and stack overflow. i had a thousand questions and zero answers.fast forward to now — i’m out here rendering a full rotating black hole with gravitational lensing like it’s a tuesday. the accretion disk is REAL. the lensing is REAL. the physics is not cooked.the whole game is still the same premise: you ARE a quantum particle. decoherence is the villain. every choice branches a timeline. survive or get collapsed into one boring classical state.but now the world actually LOOKS like what the physics describes. that’s the part that got me. when the lensing rendered correctly for the first time i genuinely sat there for a second.15 scenes. general relativity. quantum decoherence. black hole thermodynamics. built on actual ISEF research and ST Yau submission — so when i say the science is accurate i mean it.started with a circle.ended with a kerr black hole.from a thousand questions to a shipped game. the quantum particle arc is not over 🫡
Superposition is an educational interactive game that is based upon my ISEF study of near-extremal Reissner-Nordström black holes. The player controls a quantum particle moving towards a charged black hole through 15 different scenes involving the application of actual science: General Relativity, Quantum Decoherence, and Black Hole Thermodynamics.
The most challenging aspect was to make advanced science into a choice and not a lecture. See for yourself by trying Scene 1.
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DEVLOG #3 — SUPERPOSITION IS READY. Date: June 2026. Superposition: The Meissner Gap is officially ready.Built around my research on near-extremal Reissner–Nordström black holes — a project selected for ISEF — Superposition is an interactive physics experience that places players in the position of a quantum particle approaching one of the most extreme environments predicted by modern physics.Rather than presenting physics through lectures or equations alone, the experience translates advanced theoretical concepts into interactive choices and narrative-driven scenarios. Players navigate the strange region near a charged black hole where classical intuition begins to fail and quantum effects become increasingly important. Research Foundation: The project is directly inspired by my work on near-extremal Reissner–Nordström black holes and the black hole Meissner effect, where certain fields are expelled from the horizon under specific conditions.Key concepts explored throughout the experience include: Event horizons and near-horizon geometry. Surface gravity approaching zero. Quantum coherence and decoherence. Black hole thermodynamics. Information preservation and loss. Quantum state evolution in curved spacetime. What’s Inside: Superposition contains 15 unique scenarios, each designed around a different physical situation or thought experiment. Every scenario presents the player with decisions that influence their journey while simultaneously exposing them to ideas drawn from advanced physics. The result is a blend of scientific storytelling and interactive exploration.Physics LevelThe concepts are drawn from topics typically encountered in upper-level undergraduate and graduate studies:General Relativity,Quantum Mechanics,Quantum Information Theory,Black Hole Thermodynamics,Quantum Field Theory in Curved Spacetime. A core goal was making these ideas accessible without stripping the scientific depth that makes them worth exploring. Project Goal:The central question was simple:What would it be like to experience the universe from the perspective of a quantum particle approaching a black hole?This project is my attempt to answer it interactively.
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Devlog #Superposition — Backend Complete, Frontend Challenge Begins
After months of research, and days of planning, and development, I’ve officially completed the backend foundation of my project.
A huge part of this milestone was built upon the research I conducted for both ISEF and ST Yau, where I explored the physics, mathematical models, and computational concepts that drive the project. That research phase is now complete, and the backend systems required to support those ideas have been implemented and tested.
The backend now handles the core logic, data processing, and simulation architecture that will power the experience behind the scenes. Reaching this stage feels significant because it transforms the project from a collection of research papers and theoretical models into something that can actually run.
Now comes what I expect to be the most challenging phase of development: the frontend.
Unlike the backend, where most of the work involved implementing algorithms and system architecture, the frontend requires turning complex scientific concepts into an intuitive and visually engaging experience. This means building interactive visualizations, creating smooth user interactions, and ensuring that advanced simulations can be understood by users without sacrificing scientific accuracy.
Current frontend goals include:
Designing the overall user interface and experience
Building real-time visualizations for simulations
Creating interactive 3D scenes and effects
Connecting frontend components with backend systems
Optimizing performance for complex graphical rendering
Making scientific concepts accessible and engaging
I’ve already begun setting up the frontend architecture and experimenting with rendering systems and shader effects. While this phase will likely involve more debugging and iteration than any previous stage, it’s also where the project will truly come to life.
The research is complete.
The backend is complete.
Now the real challenge begins: bringing everything together into an experience people can see, interact with, and explore.
More updates soon as development progresses. 🚀
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start working on my backend using my research selected for isef 2026 and submitted to st yau 2026
