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
On a different note, but I saw the Netflix adaptation of the 3 body problem, and they rushed the entire plot ofc. If you would like to see the series more thoroughly flushed out, I recommend the chinese drama on YouTube with eng subs. The visual effects obv is not as good but the storytelling is a lot better.
Lot of comments here could be simplified into stating that you cannot measure with infinite precision. That’s really the “problem” of the N body problem. You need measurements to calculate where the bodies are in the future. There is no such thing as infinite precision so you can never accurately project the positions of N bodies beyond some future time. It’s not much different than predicting the weather.
I feel like this TED Ed video explains it pretty darn well, and is an enjoyable watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D89ngRr4uZg
It’s completely been solved but there’s no general answer that fits nicely. The formula for a force between two objects with known masses and distances is super straight forward. Add a third object? Oh shit.
Mathematically, in the old days people had to use calculus in a room with a couple hundred people to predict pathways. Now we can use computers.
Even before computers there were multiple three body systems that had been solved to be stable.
For unstable configurations, that’s where computers are brilliant.
In most three body systems that are chaotic, one of the large masses will be expelled from the system leaving a chaotic two body system (in most cases). In others, they can become stable or at least predicable without expelling one mass.
In short, yes, it absolutely has been solved and we can predict with a degree of certainty the orbital pathways of a three body system.
It just was nuts to predict and calculate by hand in the past.
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