November 30, 2006
Unusual and beautiful solutions
Unusual and beautiful solutions to the Three-Body Problem.
He has seven pages with multiple examples on each page. Take a few minutes -- they just get wilder as you go.
(Three planets chasing each other around a figure-eight orbit can be stable. Who knew?)
Posted by douglas at November 30, 2006 12:52 PMComments
Way cool. Thanks Doug.
Posted by: Christine at November 30, 2006 03:58 PMVery nice! I've declared it "Physics Day" in my department and sent around the link.
Posted by: Bernard Guerrero at November 30, 2006 05:04 PMThe old cliches about the ship "spiraling out of orbit" don't seem quite so awful, after all.
Posted by: pouncer at November 30, 2006 07:25 PMCelestial mechanics is the new crack. (You should see what I got in the lab.)
Posted by: Carlos at December 1, 2006 02:47 AMSo we might yet discover planetary rosettes?
Posted by: Randy McDonald at December 5, 2006 07:41 AMRosette-like behavior, probably. Stable rosettes, unlikely. Note how sensitive Butikov's configurations are to initial conditions.
Posted by: Carlos at December 6, 2006 04:46 AMPost a comment