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Physicists Discover 13 New Solutions To Three-Body Problem
sciencehabit writes "It's the sort of abstract puzzle that keeps a scientist awake at night: Can you predict how three objects will orbit each other in a repeating pattern? In the 300 years since this 'three-body problem' was first recognized, just three families of solutions have been found. Now, two physicists have discovered 13 new families. It's quite a feat in mathematical physics, and it could conceivably help astrophysicists understand new planetary systems."
The paper is available at arxiv.
Though I'll admit it's entirely theoretical for me so far.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
naked and petrified!
You mean the paleolithic version of the three body problem?
Ezekiel 23:20
The one that *usually* keeps scientists awake at night is, "how can I get my girlfriend and her cute roommate into bed at the same time?"
Koans and fables for the software engineer
The orbit gallery
Click on an orbit and look at the "real space" diagram to see the actual paths of the planets.
would anyone care to explain how much accurate are the numerical analysis/numerical integration solutions ?
They are as accurate as you care to make them. The problem is that increased accuracy over a long period can
require an exponential increase in cost.
Does the accuracy depend on how small is the dt we chose between each calculation ?
Precisely.
While the results are interesting, it looks like the 13 new solutions all involve 3 equal mass bodies with total zero angular momentum and coplanar. Of course, all the periodic solutions are probably special cases of some sort.
so that actually means that for any dt, however small it is, given enough simulation time, there is a time point in the future after which the simulation is completely wrong ( for various values of "completely" )
I think just getting the girlfriend into bed (or having one, for that matter) is sufficient of a problem for most scientists.
"how can I get my girlfriend and her cute roommate into bed at the same time?"
Try turning the lights off and leaving the room.
Ezekiel 23:20
I think just getting the girlfriend into bed (or having one, for that matter) is sufficient of a problem for most scientists.
Well, at least they've already solved in for a spherical girlfriend in vacuum.
Ezekiel 23:20
I don't think they did it that way, rathe, they are using the computer to help them predict repeating lissajous patterns (for want of a better term) on their transformed sphere-space.
That then relates back to a specific repeating orbit in 3-space.
This is rather interesting, in that it is quite similar (methinks) to the knot classification problem.
But looking at the lissajous figures, it doesn't really seem to me that there are fourteen new classes, unless the lagrange solutions -- which are all a single class -- were counted as five.
But it's no less impressive, what they have done. They have started to transform from physicists to mathematicians.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
You misunderstand the laws of thermodynamics. They apply also at the quantum level, and deal mostly about the energy cost of transferring a bit of information. The trick being that the bit may or may not decay with some probability which depends on how much energy you put into preserving it. Where a "bit" is for example the excitation level of an electron.
The universe is truly nondeterministic. It really is a hugely complicated probability density function :)