Three-body problem
Physics problem related to laws of motion and gravity / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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In physics, specifically classical mechanics, the three-body problem involves taking the initial positions and velocities (or momenta) of three point masses and predicting their subsequent trajectories according to Newton's laws of motion and Newton's law of universal gravitation.[1] Unlike two-body problems, the three-body problem has no general closed-form solution.[1] The resulting dynamical system of three bodies orbiting each other is chaotic for most initial conditions, and in most cases the only way to determine their positions is to calculate 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 was the one involving the Moon, Earth, and the Sun.[2] In an extended modern sense, a three-body problem is any problem in classical mechanics or quantum mechanics that models the motion of three particles.