What is the 3 Body Problem in physics? Is there a solution to it?

1.13K viewsOtherPhysics

I recently finished watching the 3 Body Problem on Netflix so this question came to mind. Can anyone explain (in simple terms) why the 3 body problem was deemed unsolvable even by the advanced alien race in the series? Even better, can anyone here simplify what the 3 Body Problem actually is in Physics? It really got my curiosity. Thanks! 🙂

In: Physics

24 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Just look up a chaos pendulum, that’s essentially the three body problem. A simple pendulum is incredibly predictable to math out but a chaos pendulum… well they live up to their name. I don’t think we’ll ever have computers that can model a chaos pendulum’s actions out indefinitely, I think the best you can do is take the masses and vectors and project a possibility into the future and that prediction relative to reality will always grow exponentially apart the farther into the future you make it.

But I’m no mathematician, I’m just a boob with a keyboard, perhaps predictive modeling is much better than I give it credit.

You are viewing 1 out of 24 answers, click here to view all answers.