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
The issue is that over time very small factors have very large effects.
As an example, if you were calculating the collision of billiards balls by the time you calculate out to the 7th collision you need to have considered the gravitational effect of the people in the room to continue making accurate predictions.
So the issue is never predicting what will happen *tomorrow* in the three body problem (assuming a solar system), the issue is that a passing comet might change the system 20 million years from now in a way that is essentially impossible to account for.
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