I was in physics and had a brief conversation on chaos theory and we started talking about space and he briefly mentioned about the 3 body problem.
Thing is, everything interacts with other things for a reason right? I understand it’s complicated, but if you know all the necessary data, why can’t we do it?
In: Planetary Science
It’s a problem, because it is worthy of study. There is a sort of contradiction here. All you need to understand is the laws of gravitation, but somehow it’s very difficult.
In other words, you start writing the equations out and at some point it gets unimaginably complicated.
When you have two bodies there are lots of simplifying assumptions.
Usually, one is orbiting the other, so the distance is fixed.
Their masses are the same.
Tidal forces change periodically.
It is safe to assume nothing else interacts with them.
You can see with 3 body problem, those assumptions are broken. So it’s much more complicated.
Scientists cracked gravity using math calculations for very careful observations of celestial events. It was predictable, so we figured it out.
3 body problem has many variables changing often.
In short, it’s almost impossible to solve without a computer. So historically speaking and philosophically, the three body problem was nearly impossible and It was a marvel that you can solve 2 bodies, but not 3 bodies.
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