Why is the 3 body problem, a problem?

884 viewsOtherPlanetary Science

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

15 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

See, that’s exactly the problem… we don’t know all the necessary data. In fact we can’t possibility know all the necessary data. Think a 1Kg packet of sugar. If you weight it on your bathroom scale it will say 1Kg. If you weigh it on your kitchen scale maybe it will say 1001g, but let’s say it says 1000g. If you weigh it on a lab scale maybe it will say 1000.001g, but let’s say it says 1000.000g. If you weigh it in an even more precise lab scale, maybe it says 1000.00000000000001g and it goes on forever. You can’t possibly know with 100% accuracy, and because of how sensitive to minuscule differences in the inputs the 3body problem is, it becomes impossible to predict the outcome.

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