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
* “Body” is just a physics word for ‘thing made of matter’.
* Things made of matter typically (always?) have mass.
* Gravity is a property of objects with mass.
* We have physics theories that allow us to apply powerful mathematics to accurately describe how objects move due to gravity.
* So, therefore, you’d *expect* that we can just consider any group of ‘bodies’, apply our mathemtatics to them, and now accurately describe how objects move.
but there is a problem here. The mathematics is hard to *exactly* solve.
* If you have 3 things with mass, it turns out that we usually cannot calculate how they’ll move. We can approximate it, but eventually the approximation will be wildly wrong.
* (In some special cases we might be able to solve it, like if you imagine them in some perfectly symetrical scenario, for instance. But in general, we cannot solve it.)
* ~~It is possible that a reliable solution exists, but we haven’t found one, and for all we know, it might be impossible.~~
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