MayaJiva

Magnetic Bugs in Virtual Fields

Magnetotactic bacteria are among the simplest organisms that navigate: they contain chains of magnetite nanocrystals that align with geomagnetic field lines, steering the cell toward preferred oxygen concentrations. MayaJiva simulates these organisms — their physics, their behaviour, their emergent collective dynamics — as a testbed for agent-based modelling at the intersection of biophysics and simulation.

Architecture

MayaJiva follows a two-layer design:

• C++ physics core — The simulation engine. Magnetic torque dynamics, flagellar propulsion, Brownian noise, cell-cell interactions, and environmental field gradients. Performance-critical, deterministic, testable without a renderer.
• Godot GDExtension — Real-time 3D visualization via Godot Engine. The C++ core is compiled as a GDExtension, giving Godot native access to the simulation state for rendering thousands of agents in real time.

What It Explores

• Single-agent dynamics — How a magnetotactic bacterium orients, swims, and responds to field perturbations. The interplay of magnetic torque, rotational diffusion, and active swimming.
• Collective behaviour — Emergent patterns when many agents interact: band formation at oxic-anoxic interfaces, response to field reversals, spatial self-organization.
• Environmental coupling — Navigation in realistic field geometries — not just uniform fields but gradients, inclination angles, and local anomalies.

Role in the Maya Ecosystem

MayaJiva is "Direction C" of the MayaLucIA environment. Where BRAVLi reconstructs brain circuits and MāyāPramāṇa twins quantum sensors, MayaJiva explores the simplest organisms that sense and act on magnetic fields — a bridge between physics and biology at the most fundamental level.

Technical Stack

C++ (physics core) · Godot 4 (GDExtension) · Python (analysis, parameter sweeps) · Agent-based modelling · Stochastic differential equations

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