only works in 2D.
in 3D, prob. of ‘drunken walk’ approaches zed.
“two of the objects might orbit each other closely while the third is flung into a wide orbit”
I got flung once as described here. ...out of a mosh pit.
The third object generally lands on it’s ass and slides a short distance before it’s friends hand it it’s drink and tells it to get back in the pit which the third object is more than happy to oblige.
Here, hold my beer.
At this point they seem satisfied with probability rather than certainty. Seems inadequate, still.
Euler?
Lagrange?
The Hillary Klintoon walk?
As a retired physicist, sure glad I retired in 1985...
My very first computer program was for a school assignment to encode numerical solutions the restricted three-body problem. Earth, Moon and spaceship, for example. You can get a good handle on that.
As for this project, I’m not sure that assigning probabilities to different outcomes is the same as “cracking” the problem. As usual, the headline writer promises much more than the researchers do themselves.
Translated: We cannot characterize the intial conditions properly, so we cannot solve the problem.
I’m not a physicist, so be gentle on me, but it seems that even though you might not know the “initial conditions”, you would certainly know every parameter (mass of each body, relative accelerations and velocities, etc.) at any subsequent snapshot in time. Why couldn’t their motion be predicted from that set of knowns?
“I think you’ve had a bit too much to drink.”
“I’m a scientist!”
I read the article. They ‘cracked’ nothing.
they stumbled across it...
So, God’s physics are like grandma’s recipes.
A pinch of this and a pinch of that.
I thought this post was about me for a minute.
I thought that problem was already solved by the “Weebles and Wabble” equation of 1989.
5.56mm
The clue was there all along:
If a body meets a body meets a body, comin’ through the rye.
The French mathematician Vercingetorix solved this problem just before Julius Caesar invaded Gaul.
Menage’ a trois
Whereby one body (A) of the 3 bodies can only occupy one
body (B) at the same time the third body (C) is orbiting
the second body (B) ...Re-entry may be facilitated by
body (A) only if body (B) and body (C) remain
in synchronous orbits. Asynchronicity may occur at any
time body (A) separates from body (B) and enters the
gravitational field of body (C), thus causing immediate
collision of bodies (A) and (C). Such collisions may result
in spawning of new bodies, though only 1/4 mass of one of
the bodies (A), (B), or (C).
Solved? Can they make predictions?
Somehow I doubt this. Will be interesting to see how things go with this.
"It's green!"
Now we know the secret to Captain Kirk's success in space!
-PJ