Technology

60123 readers

2912 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

166

Mathematicians find 12,000 new solutions to 'unsolvable' 3-body problem (www.space.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Mathematicians find 12,000 new solutions to 'unsolvable' 3-body problem::Calculating the way three things orbit each other is notoriously tricky, but a new study may reveal 12,000 new solutions.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Isn't this already solved by total gravitational mass anyway? I'm not understanding what this article even means. You have 3 bodies that are constantly losing mass, and any difference in equilibrium means they fall out of orbit with each other. 3 bodies of exactly or near the density would decay at the same rate. I'm a laymen, but help me out here.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

PBS has a good video on it: https://youtu.be/et7XvBenEo8?si=w2ZJDnYQbWDY3TgR

The summary is that scientists don't have a single, simple equation that they can use to precisely predict the orbits of three bodies based on the initial positions and velocities of those bodies like they can with only two bodies (the two-body problem). The solutions they have are either approximate solutions (not precise, but close enough to be useful), equations that apply only to specific types of orbits and therefore can't be used to predict other three-body orbits, and a general equation that is so ridiculously long that it is not really usable. I am also just a layman, so take my summary with a grain of salt, but hopefully the video will help.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://youtu.be/et7XvBenEo8?si=w2ZJDnYQbWDY3TgR

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.