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A fresh, abstract approach to solving the statistical model for the famous “three-body problem”. This promising idea tackles chaos between co-orbiting bodies by treating space as an eight-dimensional region.
Order out of chaos
Isaac Newton’s three laws of motion can elegantly describe the basic physics of how things interact in the universe. These equations can be used to describe how Earth orbits the sun or how the moon orbits the Earth.
However, when Newton tried to introduce a third object to a pair of orbiting objects such as a relationship between Earth, moon, and the sun his equations broke down.
The three-body problem refers to astronomers inability to track the collision course of three stars hurtling toward one another through space.
To better predict the fates of these celestial bodies, the secret is to treat space like a leaky balloon made of Swiss cheese.
Picture Earth and the moon careening together around the solar system. It s clear what will happen as the moon continues to circle our planet, completing its full orbit each month. Now picture as in the 2011 film
Melancholia a rogue planet barreling toward Earth.
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With this third celestial body in the mix, all bets are off. Astronomers have spent centuries puzzling over this thorny and enduring three-body problem to no avail; even if scientists track the movements of each body from nanosecond to nanosecond, they still can t reliably predict how the three stars will affect one another.
Physicists Edge Closer to Taming the Three-Body Problem
A new model cuts through the chaos to reach the best-yet predictions of complex gravitational interactions
May 7, 2021
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Physicists have spent centuries grappling with an inconvenient truth about nature: Faced with three stars on a collision course, astronomers could measure their locations and velocities in nanometers and milliseconds and it wouldn’t be enough to predict the stars’ fates.
But the cosmos frequently brings together trios of stars and black holes. If astrophysicists hope to fully understand regions where heavenly bodies mingle in throngs, they must confront the “three-body problem.”
While the result of a single three-body event is unknowable, researchers are discovering how to predict the range of outcomes of large groups of three-body interactions. In recent years, various groups have figured out how to make statistical forecasts of hypothetical three-body matchups: For instance, if