Physicists crack unsolvable three-body problem using drunkard's walk ... It has plagued scientists since the days of Isaac Newton.

https://www.livescience.com ^ | January 4, 2022 | By Ashley Hamer

[zeugma]

Solved? Can they make predictions?

Somehow I doubt this. Will be interesting to see how things go with this.

[Political Junkie Too]

"the drunkard's walk"

"It's green!"

Now we know the secret to Captain Kirk's success in space!

-PJ

[who_would_fardels_bear]

Has it been shown there is no closed form solution (e.g. like it’s been shown that an angle can’t be trisected using only a compass and straight edge) or is this still an open problem like the Reimann Hypothesis?

[Red Badger]

Close enough for government work...................

[BubbaBasher]

That’s silly.

[Red Badger]

Frankly, there were no French in Julius Caesar’s time, just Bois and Gauls.................

[Waverunner]

True about the probabilities... physical tolerances are defined so the product will assemble and function properly.
One of the most interesting manufacturing challenges I had was to grind a hemispherical shell of ceramic to the tightest tolerance I could. That included concentric position of the inner and outer hemisphere. Our CMM was a Zeiss with about a 3 micron accuracy and it showed everything spot on. The customer bought 4 of the grinders and had us build 2 frames so they could convert them to CMM’s. Fun project. the hemispheres were about 20” or 500mm across.

[Elsie]

A physics problem that has plagued science since the days of Isaac Newton is closer to being solved, say a pair of Israeli researchers.

We will DEFINITELY be a LOT closer to solving it when we receive our new grant money!

[Elsie]

A solution was found using a power series but you would need to use 10^8000000 terms.

Kevin, you may want to jump in here.

Or not...

[Elsie]

We can thank our lucky stars that a FOURTH body hasn’t said, “Hello...”

[Elsie]

The French mathematician Vercingetorix solved this problem just before Julius Caesar invaded Gaul.

The web can show us many images of three bodies solving a particular problem, even when the initial conditions are unknown.

[Elsie]

See!

[Elsie]

But it IS one of the four possible starting positions.

[Lurker]

I wink in your direction, ma’am.

L

[Kevmo]

There are now mathematical solutions being worked out on computers that could never be approached using humans, pen and paper. But this particular problem doesn’t look like they generated a real solution. This is a well known issue in mathematics, similar to a prior issue in math where it didn’t seem possible to calculate the area under a curve with any precision until Liebniz and Newton developed calculus. I think that this particular problem will generate its own new mathematical flourish similar to calculus.

[SunkenCiv]

They got the idea from watching Joe Buy-Dung. Thanks Red Badger. Another three-fer!

---

---

· List topics · post a topic · subscribe · Google ·

---

[SunkenCiv]

· join · view topics · view or post blog · bookmark · post new topic · subscribe ·

Google news searches: exoplanet · exosolar · extrasolar ·

[SunkenCiv]

---

join or quit view topics view or post blog bookmark post new topic subscribe

---

[grey_whiskers]

You need a nice, hot cup of tea /Hitchhikers’ Guide To The Galaxy>

[grey_whiskers]

If one of the bodies is mine and the other two are attractive nubile females I’d have no difficulty solving this problem.

It would take repeated efforts and long term study, of course.

L
= = = = = = = = =

Doubtless your solution would include simple hormonic motion and the presence of degenerate modes...