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To: Lonesome in Massachussets

All the hubbub here is about 13 new solutions. I wonder if anyone has put an upper limit on how many there are?


21 posted on 03/10/2013 6:15:33 AM PDT by LibWhacker
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To: LibWhacker

There are clearly an infinite number of solutions, just as there are to the two body problem. My take is that they are finding new classes of solutions.

One example of the three body problem is the moon-earth-sun. The system is powerfully perturbed by Jupiter and Venus, so it’s not really a pure three body problem, but it is representative of one class of solutions: Ms >> Me >> Mm, where “>>” means “is sufficiently greater than” with the two smaller bodies body in a nearly Keplerian orbit, and their center of mass orbiting the most massive central body . Another class are the famous Lagrangian points, which include thousands of Trojan (no smirking) asteroids. Another is the horseshoe (only in Lagrangian coordinates) orbit. It was believed that horseshoe orbits were only possible theoretical constructs, until asteroids in horseshoe orbits around earth were discovered.


23 posted on 03/10/2013 7:08:56 AM PDT by Lonesome in Massachussets (What word begins with "O" and ends in economic collapse?)
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