System overflow when passing large numbers into a function

Question

I'm trying to write a program to simulate the solar system and I'm passing large numbers into a function to calculate the gravitational force. The line of code in question is:

Earth.ptyForce = CalculateForce(Earth.ptyMass, Sun.ptyMass, dblSeparation)

Where:

Earth.ptyMass is equal to 5.9736 * 10 ^ 24
Sun.ptyMass is equal to 1.989 * 10 ^ 30
dblSeparation is only equal to 300 and is scaled inside the function.

I just get a system overflow and I suspect it's because the numbers are too large, is there any way around this? I've considered just passing smaller numbers into the function and just scaling them up but I'd rather avoid doing that if possible.

Just in case it's needed the CalculateForce Fucnction is as follows:

Public Function CalculateForce(ByVal intMass1 As Integer, ByVal intMass2 As Integer, ByVal dblDistance As Double)
    dblDistance *= dblDistanceScalar
    Return dblGravitationalConstant * intMass1 * intMass2 / dblDistance ^ 2
End Function

The error specifically reads:

System.OverflowException: 'Arithmetic operation resulted in an overflow.'

Possible duplicate of Very, very large numbers in vb.net

41686d6564
– 41686d6564

2018-09-02 15:33:58 +00:00
Commented Sep 2, 2018 at 15:33 — 41686d6564
– 41686d6564, Commented Sep 2, 2018 at 15:33

CruleD · Accepted Answer · 2018-09-02 15:33:56Z

2

Your number is too big, 10^30 is larger than 2^32 read this:

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/visual-basic/programming-guide/language-features/data-types/numeric-data-types

answered Sep 2, 2018 at 15:33

CruleD

1,1832 gold badges7 silver badges18 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

System overflow when passing large numbers into a function

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Linked

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Linked

Related