Mike's Notes
This is an excellent video presentation of the three-body problem by theoretical astrophysicist and mathematician Eliezer Diggins. It was a Communicating Science Project—Astronomy 3070—at the University of Utah in 2022.
Wikipedia - "In physics, specifically classical mechanics, the three-body problem is to take the initial positions and velocities (or momenta) of three point masses that orbit each other in space and calculate their subsequent trajectories using Newton's laws of motion and Newton's law of universal gravitation.
Unlike the two-body problem, the three-body problem has no general closed-form solution, meaning no equation always solves it. When three bodies orbit each other, the resulting dynamical system is chaotic for most initial conditions. Because there are no solvable equations for most three-body systems, the only way to predict the motions of the bodies is to estimate them using numerical methods.
The three-body problem is a special case of the n-body problem. Historically, the first specific three-body problem to receive extended study involved the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun. In an extended modern sense, a three-body problem is any problem in classical or quantum mechanics that models the motion of three particles."
Resources
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mm3I4m8YsnM
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem
- https://eliza-diggins.github.io
References
Repository
- Home > Ajabbi Research > Complex Systems
Last Updated
03/04/2025
Chaos and the Three-Body Problem
Eliza Diggins is a theoretical astrophysicist and mathematician at the University of Utah. Her research is shared between the Department of Physics and Astronomy, where she studies galaxy cluster dynamics and gravitational theory; and the School of Dentistry, where she works on mathematical models of trade-mediated pathogens in complex global trade networks.
