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
A three body system is an example of a **chaotic** system. This means that while we technically know how the system behaves and can simulate its future states (in this case we know all the equations of gravity), a very very small change in any input variable can drastically affect the final output to the point of it being meaningless. This means to perfectly predict such a system into the far future we have to calculate its current state to effectively infinite precision, which is impractical/impossible.
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