A new study led by researchers from the University of Copenhagen has shed light on the famously chaotic three-body problem. By running millions of simulations, they discovered 'isles of regularity' within the apparent chaos, suggesting there might be a solution or at least some predictability to this longstanding puzzle.
, by Chinese science fiction author Liu Cixin. The story’s premise is a star system where three stars orbit each other, which leads to periodic destruction on a planet orbiting one of them. As Isaac Newton described in histhe interaction of two massive bodies is easy to predict and calculate. However, the interaction of three bodies leads is where things become unpredictable over time.
The study was led by Alessandro Alberto Trani, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute , the. He was joined by researchers from the Universidad de Concepción in Chile, the American Museum of Natural History, the Leiden Observatory, and NASA’s Ames Research Center. The paper that details their findings was recently published in the journal
“The Three-Body Problem is one of the most famous unsolvable problems in mathematics and theoretical physics. The theory states that when three objects meet, their interaction evolves chaotically, without regularity, and completely detached from the starting point.
“When some regions in this map of possible outcomes suddenly become regular, it throws off statistical probability calculations, leading to inaccurate predictions. Our challenge now is to learn how to blend statistical methods with the so-called numerical calculations, which offer high precision when the system behaves regularly. In that sense, my results have set us back to square one, but at the same time, they offer hope for an entirely new level of understanding in the long run.
Three-Body Problem Chaos Theory Physics Mathematics Simulations
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