Scientists Find An Effective Solution For The Three-Body Problem - Hacker News

10/6/23, 8:36 PM Scientists find an effective solution for the three-body problem | Hacker News
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Scientists find an effective solution for the three-body problem (technion.ac.il)

321 points by olvy0 on Aug 14, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 246 comments
antognini on Aug 14, 2021 | next [–]

Here is a link to the arXiv version of the paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.00010
Incidentally, I used to work in dynamics and Hagai is great to work with. To give you a sense of him, I went to a conference
on dynamics that he organized about six years ago, and he opened it with the following story:
Many years ago, the philosopher Nasreddin was on his farm looking out into the distance and saw some people approaching.
He had heard that there were bandits in the area and became afraid that they would come, beat him, and steal all his things.
So Nasreddin ran away. As he ran, he came to a graveyard, and there he found an open grave. In case the bandits followed
him, he decided to take off all his clothes, get in the grave, and pretend to be dead.
It turned out that the men were not bandits, but were Nasreddin's friends. They saw him run off and wondered where he was
going and so followed him. As they were walking through the graveyard, they came upon the open grave and saw Nasreddin
lying there naked. So they asked him, "Nasreddin, why are you lying in this grave with all your clothes off?"
Nasreddin opened his eyes and saw it was his friends, and replied, "My friends, there are some questions which have no
answers. All I can tell you is that I am here because of you, and you are here because of me."
konschubert on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | next [–]

I don't get it. Is it just meant to be funny or is there a deeper message?
dandelany on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

Here’s my reading of it: when speaking about dynamical systems with several interdependent moving parts,
humans are fond of asking “why” questions and looking for simple narratives in such systems where satisfying
answers may not exist.
For example, imagine a three-body planetary system which exists in a pseudo-stable configuration for millions
of years, until suddenly one of the planets gets slung off on a wild orbit and ejected from the system. A layman
might be inclined to ask, “whoa, that’s weird, why did that happen?!” while the physicist will reply “All I can say
is that planet A is where it is because of planets B & C, and B & C are where they are because of A.”
antognini on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

I like that! The way I interpreted it when hearing it at the conference he was saying that we were all here
at the conference because he had organized it, but he was there because we were all there to talk about
our research. But the great thing about a good parable is that there are endless interpretations. :)
dandelany on Aug 15, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

Ha, I suppose in context your interpretation makes more sense :)
arvidkahl on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I think this might be about the interdependency of these actions. Both lead to each other. None would happen
without the other.
Wrapped in a funny story.
jimmySixDOF on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

IANAP, but it calls to mind "Winger's Friend" which was a response to Schrödinger’s Cat that says:
imagining a (human) friend of his shut in a lab, measuring a quantum system. He argued it was
absurd to say his friend exists in a superposition of having seen and not seen a decay unless and
until Wigner opens the lab door. [1]
I have seen it come up in the Many Worlds school of thought and reminds me of HHTTG's :
The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal is a vicious wild animal from the planet of Traal, known for
its never-ending hunger and its mind-boggling stupidity. One of the main features of the Beast is that
if you can't see it, it assumes it can't see you.
[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/this-twist-on-sch...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28178509 1/21
OnlineGladiator on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

https://youtu.be/_eRRab36XLI
jareklupinski on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

if you have trouble telling your friends from your foes at a distance
buy binoculars
thinkski on Aug 14, 2021 | prev | next [–]

When they say motions of three bodies are random and unpredictable, I assume they mean not able to be modeled with a
closed form equation? Seems like the motions would still be entirely deterministic — could still predict the locations of the
bodies computationally, given your computer computes faster than reality (at least for a reality with only 3 bodies), no?
ordu on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | next [–]

They would be deterministic. But they are unpredictable. Minuscule fluctuations (coming from influence of some much
smaller bodies, that are not in the model, or approximations in calculations) can lead to dramatic differences in the
outcome.
So theoretically speaking, they are deterministic, but practically they are unpredictable.
simonh on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

It's got nothing to do with perturbations from additional small bodies, the problem is exactly mathematically
calculating the outcome for exactly three bodies within reasonable time frames even if you assume perfect ideal
knowledge about the system. It turns out this is excruciatingly hard.
The n-body problem where you add further bodies, even very small ones, is even harder.
Aeolun on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Huh? If this is the case, wouldn’t a 2 body problem also be practically impossible to calculate?
I mean, you can certainly still predict to a certain (probably high) level of accuracy, but ultimately that motion is
also influenced by factors outside your model.
colechristensen on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

The question is what happens with a small perturbation and how does it "grow".
For a two body problem, you nudge one of the bodies and it is forever off by a small amount, but your
predictions into infinity require only a small adjustment to compensate.
For a three body problem you nudge one of the bodies and only for a very short time do your previous
predictions stay true, the change amplifies until nothing you thought might happen before the nudge
means anything at all, and a common occurrence is one of the bodies being ejected.
RhysU on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

This is sometimes called "infinite sensitivity to initial conditions" or "deterministic chaos".
stavros on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

> a common occurrence is one of the bodies being ejected.
So the problem eventually solves itself?
motoboi on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

Well, not if the ejected body contains you.
TheOtherHobbes on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

Being ejected from your model is unquestionably a solution of sorts, although it does
Raise Questions.
dnautics on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Yes, but but also the problem really is: "given some initial condition space, can we estimate
the likelihood of ejection (how many conditions in the condition space eject) in X
timeframe"?
onlyrealcuzzo on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

> For a two body problem, you nudge one of the bodies and it is forever off by a small amount,
but your predictions into infinity require only a small adjustment to compensate.
How does this even work? Where is a place in the universe where there are only two bodies??
Where would the nudge come from if not from a third body?! A ghost?
colechristensen on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

You do an accounting of the nearby massive objects and their distances from each other,
pairs of objects within certain bounds of mass and distance can be treated like there are
only those two objects in the universe with the understanding that there will be a small
error because of outside influences. It’s an approximation, but in the right circumstances a
very good one.
Each planet and the sun can be done like this, ignoring all of the other planets. Each moon
and its planet can be considered a two body system ignoring the rest of the moons.
If you just randomly generated a bunch of massive bodies and pressed play, you would have
few 2 body systems and a lot of chaos, but that’s a problem that solves itself as the chaos
results in either collisions or ejections.
mannerheim on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

You're taking it too literally. The 'nudge' means a change in initial conditions, and could
result e.g. from measurement uncertainty, not necessarily a literal nudge.
It also doesn't necessarily matter that much if there are more than two bodies, if the
gravitational influence of other bodies is small enough, then you can model as a two body
problem.
mokus on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

The “nudge” can also come up even with exact starting information. When you
calculate the next step and round it to the nearest nanometer, you’ve just nudged the
system by enough to eventually make your prediction worthless in the 3-body case.
mynegation on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

The relative magnitude of interactions is important. The article specifically mentioned triple
star system as an example. Solar system is of course many body, but (a) it has already
settled into (sort of) stable configuration (b) there is one massive body and everything else
revolves around it. Yes, massive bodies like gas giants have noticeable affect on other
bodies, but due to the distances they tend to be in the stable territory.
aaaaaaaaaaab on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

No. A small error in the initial conditions of a 2-body system produces a small error in the result. In case
of a 3-body system, a small error will result in drastically different outcomes. The phase space of a 2-
body system is nice and smooth, but a 3-body system’s is more like a fractal.
alephu5 on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

For a two-body problem the discrepancies between your model and reality increase gradually with time,
but it's still possible to predict eclipses decades in advance with a precise albeit imperfect measurement
of initial conditions.
With a three-body problem any slight shift causes a wildly different trajectory, bearing no resemblance to
the original so your measurements of the initial condition have to be perfect.
Grustaf on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

No that's not it. The two body problem has a closed, analytical solution, the three body one
doesn't, so you need to simulate it. It's a fundamentally different approach.
l332mn on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

That's not really the issue. The three body problem does have an analytical solution in the
form of a power series, but the problem is that it converges so slowly to be of any practical
use.

It is though, if you don’t have a closed form solution you need to use an iterative
process to calculate the positions, meaning errors will accrue over time. For a closed
form solution that wouldn’t be the case.
Thanks for mentioning the existence of an analytical solution at all though, I wasn't
aware of that.
chestervonwinch on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

> meaning errors will accrue over time
This is not universally true. Error behavior is a function of the particular
problem, the algorithm used to approximate its solution, and the properties of
input data. A large subtopic of numerical analysis is concerned with this kind of
stuff. See [1] or [2] to get a flavor.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerical_stability
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lax_equivalence_theorem
johncolanduoni on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

There are iterative methods/systems that stabilize over time. For example,
symplectic integrators on tame problems oscillate lightly around the true
energy of the system over time. The issue here is the properties of the
underlying problem, not the set of solution methods.
extropy on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Both of you are correct.
ekianjo on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

arent eclipses three body problems?
nwatson on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

For all practical purposes eclipses are two two-body problems ... Sun vs Earth-Moon pair,
and Earth vs Moon. The scale of the Sun is so vastly larger and distances so great from sun
to earth there's no need to do 3-body.
If the three had roughly the same mass would be different story.
sasaf5 on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Better stated, the 2-body problem can be solved with a finite number of standard operations, i.e. a
closed-form expression. This solution does not exist for the 3-body problem.
evanb on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

This is not a requirement for a system to lack chaos, nor is it a metric by which we can judge if a
system DOES have chaos.
bsf_ on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

In principle - yes. Except that we can change our frame of reference, and treat the two body problem as
a pseudo one body problem (the lab frame becomes the center of mass of one of the bodies). One cannot
do this for the three body problem, which gives us at best a pseudo two body problem.
Grustaf on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

No, the fundamental difference is that the two-body problem can be solved analytically, you can write
down a formula. For three bodies and up you only have numerical solutions, simulations, and they will
break down over time.
phreeza on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

The problem is that a three-body system is inherently unstable/chaotic. So even if you run a
numerical simulation with the same granularity for a two-body and a three-body system, the
three-body simulation will degrade much faster than the two-body system. This is unrelated to the
fact that there is a closed form solution, there are many stable, non-chaotic dynamical systems
that don't have a closed form solution.

Well sure. But my point was that for two bodies you don’t need to simulate at all, you can
just get the answer for any point in time.

The need for numerical simulations is completely unrelated to the predictability
and/or stability of the system. If you have a Lyapunov exponent smaller than 0
everywhere, errors don't accumulate and you can simulate numerically for as long as
you like.

It's not unrelated, but the implication only goes in one direction. If you have a
closed form solution, that implies that you can model it completely forever, but
sure the opposite is not true.
MontyCarloHall on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Conversely, there are also extremely simple closed-form recurrence relations that exhibit
chaotic behavior, e.g. the logistic map.

True but a recurrence relationship is not the same as a closed form solution. The
differential equation for a three body problem is also very simple.
MontyCarloHall on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

Of course. My point was just that you can evaluate a recurrence relation
exactly (i.e. with zero numerical error) and still get chaotic behavior. OP’s
mistaken point was that the three body problem’s chaos arises solely from
numerical error during simulation, which is untrue.
acjohnson55 on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Would a linear-feedback shift register be an example of a recurrence relation that
exhibits chaotic behavior?
user-the-name on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

That is not the issue. There are many problems that do not have analytical solutions, but can be
approximated numerically to any precision you would like.
The issue with the three-body problem is that it is chaotic, meaning any error will eventually grow
to take over the entire solution, making prediction impossible, even in theory. Every chaotic
system lacks an analytical solution, but not every system without an analytical solution is chaotic.
bottled_poe on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I think this is accurate and I don’t understand why you are being downvoted.
kergonath on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I think the issue was more with “random” than with “unpredictable”.
mjburgess on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Random doesnt mean non-deterministic anyway.
X is random with respect to Y, if knowing Y makes no difference to your predicting that X.
QM systems are indeterminate, they are random in the above sense /because/ they are indeterminate. But that
isnt what random means.
elcomet on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

What you're describing is not randomness, it's independence.
It's hard to define randomness. I think non-determinism is better than your definition.
mjburgess on Aug 15, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

It isn't hard to define randomness. It's an epistemic condition on the knowability of Y given X.
Non-determinism is an incoherent definition of randomness; classical physical processes are
entirely deterministic.
The point of a coinflip being random is that it is random with respect to the information both
observers of the coinflip have. It isnt random with respect to /any/ piece of information.
There are almost no processes which are non-deterministic in this sense. Not enough to bother
calling them random; and in physics we do not: the word is indeterminate. Randomness has
nothing to do with quantum mechanics; it wasn't invented in the 1920s. It's an epistemic
condition.
The RANDOM variable X, st. X ~ N(mean, std) provides a random number x -- x isnt random with
repect to the outcome which produced x; nor is it random with respect to an index of a vector in
which it is contained.
elcomet on Aug 19, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

This does not match the intuitive notion of randomness though.
I would say for a given variable to be random, it must not be predictible, given any other
variables that humans can know.
I don't think it makes sense to say that X is random "with respect to Y", that's just the
definition of independence.
And a constant variable is independent from all other variables, but it's definitely not
random.
mjburgess on Aug 22, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

Then only quantum indeterminate phenomenon is random, and nothing else.
I dont think many people have thought enough about the world to appeal to their
intuitions.
Randomness isnt quantum indeterminacy.
ninkendo on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

The motion isn’t deterministic if free will exists. Launching a rocket into space decreases earth’s rotation speed
ever so slightly, which will have a small impact on the moon’s trajectory due to tidal interactions, and so on.
athrowaway3z on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

Please define 'free will' before using it in a sentence about determinism.
thaumasiotes on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

If that was a requirement, discussions of determinism would sound awfully one-sided. ;p
martincmartin on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

There are those who believe determinism is not only compatible with free will, but required for free will.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism
mxxc on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

that case is beyond scope of the three body problem
ineptech on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]

Edward Lorenz summarized chaotic behavior as: "When the present determines the future, but the approximate
present does not approximately determine the future."
So yes, you could predict the locations computationally to an arbitrary point in the future if you knew their starting
locations and velocities with perfect precision; but in practice of course you cannot know anything's position with
perfect precision, so your simulation would become inaccurate relatively quickly.
edit to add: and I believe that what this paper discusses is not a solution to the above, but rather a way of getting
around it by modeling some types of three-body behavior as if it were truly random, rather than chaotically
deterministic.
bo0tzz on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]
While we can simulate three (or more) bodies' gravitational interaction, the chaoticness means that any error in initial
state, no matter how small, will be hugely amplified. This makes long-term predictions untractable
HWR_14 on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]

As I understand it, "random and unpredictable" means impossible to measure the initial state in sufficient precision
and/or computationally impossible to calculate in a reasonable amount of time.
The actual underlying math is deterministic.
argvargc on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

It seems the problem is often mis-stated - there is no calculation problem, the problem is in adequately
defining/sampling the initial data.
It's maybe similar to predicting the weather - we can have all the perfect equations in the world for fluid
dynamics and heat flow etc, but until we have system-invisible temperature and humidity sensors for every
square millimetre of atmosphere and earth volume, we won't be able to predict the weather very accurately or
very far ahead.
bad_username on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]

There are cases in classical mechanics that fail to be deterministic.
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/403574/what-situ...
reedf1 on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]

Chaos is the extreme dependence on initial conditions. The three body problem is significantly more chaotic than a two
body problem. Welcome to chaos theory!
akomtu on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]

The initial conditions are usually known up to a small epsilon in practice. I guess this initial error grows exponentially
with time, hence "unpredictability".
DiogenesKynikos on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

This exponential increase in error is described by the Lyapunov exponent of the system:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyapunov_exponent
remram on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]

You can only do that with some error, e.g. your simulation needs some time step that controls the tradeoff between
computational resources used and accuracy of the results. For any fixed time step, after enough time your simulation
will completely diverge from reality.
nine_k on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]

On top of theoretically computable, but highly divergent / unstable functions mentioned nearby, there are fully
deterministic (non-random, pure) but non-computable functions. The simplest example is a function that answers
whether a given Turing machine would stop.
m3kw9 on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]

If you freeze each point in time , isn’t the next minute step deterministic? Every time you freeze, you would have all
the motion vectors to calculate the next moment, if you expand that using a lot of computation power, ca you solve it
that way?
mxxc on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]

there is no closed form, like you say, and the additional complexity is around ergodicity, i.e. solutions that start close
to each other might end up very far from each other after a certain point. this is also an issue with computer
simulations as the error might accumulate and push solutions away. in practice, given the amount of cosmological
computations people do on a daily basis, including those for satellites and rockets, this might not necessarily be that
big of an issue, but i don't work with that stuff on a daily basis.
paraknight on Aug 14, 2021 | prev | next [–]

Send it over to Trisolaris!
reedf1 on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | next [–]

Much to my pedantic horror upon reading, they don't need the solution to a three body problem, but a four body
problem!
guerrilla on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

You sure about that? The fourth body, being so small, can't really effect the motion of the other three; however
if you have the evolution of the first three then you can determine the motion of the fourth.
kragen on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

Because three-body systems are chaotic, the fourth body can affect the motion of the other three,
however small it is.
im3w1l on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

Does this mean that you could you use a three body system as a measurement device?

I'm not sure.
Measurement devices are designed to be very sensitive to some things and very insensitive
to others; for example, you want a clock to be sensitive to how much time has passed but
not what the temperature or air pressure are; you want a thermometer to be sensitive to
the temperature but not how much time has passed or the air pressure; and you want a
barometer to be sensitive to the air pressure but not the temperature or how much time has
passed.
It's easy to make a device that's sensitive to all three, like a glass jar partly full of water,
upside down in a bowl of water, resting on a bed of gravel in the bottom of the bowl, so that
some air is trapped inside the jar. The water level inside the glass jar will go up when the air
pressure goes up and down when the air pressure goes down. But it will also go down when
the temperature goes down and up when the temperature goes up, because the trapped air
will expand and contract. And over time water will evaporate from the bowl, reducing the
water level outside the jar, so over time the water level inside the jar will go down.
Usually metrology involves either reducing or eliminating these extra influences (a mercury
barometer works the same way as the device described above, but is much less sensitive to
temperature because it doesn't have any trapped air; and it's less sensitive to time because
mercury evaporates very slowly, and the level of the mercury outside the tube is very low)
or balancing them against one another so they precisely cancel out. Chaotic metrology
would seem to require a different approach.
im3w1l on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

> very sensitive to some things and very insensitive to others
Wow, phrased like that it sure sounds obvious, and yet somehow I never thought
about it.

It's not the only possible way to do things, and sometimes it's infeasible, but it
definitely makes things simpler. In theory if you have N quantities, and N
measurements that all depend on all N of those quantities in known but
different ways, you can usually compute the N quantities precisely from the N
measurements.
For example, the standard way to make an electronic thermometer is by, more
or less, measuring the current across a semiconductor diode at a given
voltage. This current is an exponential function of the ratio between the
voltage and a "threshold voltage" or "thermal voltage" Vt multiplied by an
"ideality factor" n: I = Is (exp(V/(nVt)) - 1).
The threshold voltage Vt varies linearly with temperature (it's kT/q, depending
only on Boltzmann's constant and the charge of the electron, about 25 mV at
room temperature), so in a sense the current at a given voltage is a
measurement of the temperature. But the ideality factor n depends on the
purity of the semiconductor material (generally in the range 1.0 to 2.0), and
the saturation current Is depends on the physical size of the diode junction.
Moreover, the ideality factor can change over time as the diode ages. So we're
in the position of simultaneously measuring the temperature, the size of the
diode, and the quality of its aged semiconductor material.
The solution usually taken, as I understand it, is to measure the current
through the same diode at two given voltages, one after the other, and to use
a standard value for n which is good enough. Then the ratio of the two
voltages tells you nVt (as long as the "- 1" is too small to matter) and from
that you can calculate the temperature. In theory, by taking three or more
measurements at different points in the I-V curve, you could correct for
unknown n as well, but I haven't read of anyone doing this; instead, for high-
precision thermometry, they use an RTD.
(Actually, you measure the voltage at two given currents, because that way
you don't burn up your temperature sensing diode if the temperature is a little
higher than you expected; the power dissipated then varies logarithmically
with temperature rather than exponentially. But it comes to the same thing in
the calculations.)
It's actually even worse than it sounds, because in fact when you measure a
voltage, you're always measuring it with respect to some reference voltage, so
your actual measurement is a function of the temperature, the saturation
current Is, the ideality factor n, and your reference voltage Vref, which is
typically subject to an error of around 2%. But you will note that the
ratiometric approach described above cancels out any errors due to Vref,
because the ratio of the two voltages will be unaffected by a wrong reference
voltage, as long as it's the same wrong reference voltage. So you stick a big
capacitor on it and take the measurements in quick succession.
All of this is, from a certain point of view, in the service of making the number
you finally produce very sensitive to the temperature of the diode and very
insensitive to other factors, like the battery voltage, the temperature of the
rest of the thermometer circuit, the age of the components, the humidity in the
air, and so on. But all of the actual physical quantities being measured on the
diode are the complex mix of factors described above.
MIMO antennas or phased-array receiver antennas or microphones are another
example: the signal at each antenna/microphone is a linear superposition of all
the differently-phase-shifted source signals, and you process that data to get
independent measurements of all the original source signals.
I wouldn't be surprised if chaotic metrology offered new ways to measure very
tiny differences, but I suspect it will take a lot of time to figure out the math to
make that work.
freemint on Aug 16, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Yes, you can. You can amplify small differences due to an additional gravitational field. Then
you can run a model with this disturbance included and optimize the parameters such that
the difference between the observation and model vanishes. This optimization landscape is
not convex however and gets more different "valleys" with time and by knowing which
valley you are in you gain information there are several caviats.
If there is noise in the measurement of the system this flattens the curve meaning it is
harder to distinguish which valley of the object you are in. If there is noise in system itself
this noise will amplified and more and more valleys become possible with time meaning at
some point the system state holds almost no information about the system.
However as long as the system runs the thing under measurement should not move as
otherwise gets way more difficult and less possible to optimise the difference between the
observed and the system behaviour for a certain in parameter under measurement.
In general this approach is not advisable as the chaotic system would also need parts build
to enormous precision for that not impact the system more than the signal that influences
the system. So it usually better to go with a decently straight forward approach as there are
different systems which also amplify small differences but are a lot simpler to work with
such as the measurement bridge.
simonh on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Not really because they're already so chaotic you couldn't be sure what divergences from
simulation were inherent and which were due to external perturbation.
forgotpwd16 on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Not sure what the discussion is about, but the restricted approximation only works for "insignificant"
masses (e.g. a moon if talking about two big planets and a star). And even then for "short" time periods
(a few million years). In larger scales even that mass will (I assume you've heard of the butterfly effect)
play role.
thomasz on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem_(novel)
guerrilla on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]
tl;dr three suns, one planet
mastersummoner on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Well, did we ever learn whether there were other planets in the system? It's been a minute and it's slipping my
mind.
I really loved the entire trilogy though. Each book had a very different vibe and addressed a completely
different topic/problem.
SonicScrub on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

It's been a while since I've read it, but I seem to recall that there were other planets, but they either got
ejected from the system, or fell into one of the stars.
schwartzworld on Aug 16, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

By the end there's a moon too. Doesn't that make it 5 bodies?
There are so many problems with that book. The inaccurate title is only the tip of the iceberg.
mwcampbell on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]

Practically speaking though, wouldn't the Trisolarans still want to leave their home planet for one that didn't have
chaotic eras?
TuringNYC on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

I'm sure they want to, but fitting into an electron-sized spaceship, under their current technology would be an
issue.
pkdpic_y9k on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]

They're gonna feel so silly when they get all the way here to kill us and realize we solved their silly little problem and
they have to turn right back around and go home. The looks on their translucent non-existent face things...
WJW on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

We should probably get started on an analytical problem to the whole dark forest problem thing too.
Borrible on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]

Wasn't talking to them the whole problem in the first place?
Barrin92 on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

yep I was about to say, first the UFOs and now this, turn the radio beacons off already
Borrible on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

Not to say all the other signs of earth those seamonkey tea bag aliens craving for a better future missed
with their superior technologies in Alpha Centauris immediate neighborhood.
ksec on Aug 14, 2021 | prev | next [–]

This may be a Rant, or an unpopular opinion.
Life is strange. As if God is reminding me something.
It was only yesterday Overthinking [1] was submitted on HN. A little over 10 years ago many of my friends and colleagues
told me to stop overthinking about things. It was causing me some stress and depression because when you start doing
analysis many level deep the only conclusion is any small variance will simply cause Chaos. I look it up on the internet and
that was the first time I learn about three body problem, Chaos theory, and the much more widely known butterfly effect.
I wish I was taught about this in school or told a lot sooner. To me it is much more about life than it is to maths or physics.
Where everything could start out as deterministic, and yet the small difference made end results unpredictable. Over time it
also evolved or taught me another concept, many many things or solutions in the world are somehow counter-intuitive.
Then I had a few successful project under my belt, but when I was asked in a Job interview I always attribute to "luck" more
than anything else. Which happens to be a word HR and many people hate. Americanism ( which also spreads to non-
Americans working inside American companies ) views on the world suggest if you work hard you will get it. I wish that was
the case, but there were hundreds if not thousands of known moving parts. And possibly thousands of other unknown
unknown. It worked. We worked hard. And it worked. It was everyone involved and lots of luck. I was only a small part of it.
I am sure those who interview me are all pretty smart. May be they should try to solve the three body problem.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28158435
jjcdtunb on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | next [–]

> Americanism ( which also spreads to non-Americans working inside American companies ) views on the world
suggest if you work hard you will get it.
America is a big place. I'm seventh generation American, with a patriotic family.
I wasn't raised to believe that if you work hard you WILL get it. No, it's that if you DON'T work hard, you WON'T get it.
You see, success is hard work + luck. You can have luck without hard work, but you have to have a lot more of it to
get rich and you still might squander it if you didn't earn it because you won't know what to do with it if you get it by
pure chance
You can have hard work without luck, too, like most of the folks in flyover country have. They know they aren't getting
rich, they're just trying to get by.
But you can't have real success without both hard work and luck. You might win the lottery with just luck, but you
won't wind up running a successful enterprise.
I don't know who is learning from their parents that if you work hard you'll get rich. Mine taught me that if I work hard
and have a little luck, I'll get by. A little more luck and I'll be successful. A little less, and I might need to rely on my
family or community. That's what they're for.
There's this characiture of American culture and the idea of our meritocracy that I see represented here and in media
and it doesn't ring true to me -- I would be interested to know if the people who think luck is the only necessary
component for success are Coastal or Flyover, and how much luck they've had
I know for myself, I've needed both work and luck. Without the work, I never would've been in a position to take the
opportunities offered by luck.
thayne on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

> I don't know who is learning from their parents that if you work hard you'll get rich
Rich people. It's the result of survivor bias, "I worked hard and got rich, so if you work hard you can get rich
too." And they discount the "luck". And it is reinforced by the fact that being born to wealthy, well connected
parents is really luck.
PragmaticPulp on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

> I wasn't raised to believe that if you work hard you WILL get it. No, it's that if you DON'T work hard, you
WON'T get it.
Well said. I think the common misconception comes from reducing these wisdoms into aphorisms that are short,
but easily misunderstood. Any adult who has lived more than a few years in the real world quickly understands
that hard work doesn’t guarantee success, but that success isn’t going to fall in your lap without putting in
work.
The online discourse has become particularly bad, with the pendulum swinging between extremes of “You can
do anything if you follow your dreams” to the opposite of “Nothing you do matters because it’s all blind luck”.
The latter, cynical mindset has become particularly popular as a way of dismissing or downplaying the success
of others. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard people try to attribute Jeff Bezo’s success to that one time
he was lucky enough to receive a loan from his family. Yes, it was a lucky break, but it should be obvious that
something like receiving a loan from one’s family doesn’t automatically predispose someone to lucking into
building a trillion dollar company. Yet there’s a growing contingent of people who want to believe that Jeff Bezos
tripped and fell and landed in the founder seat of a successful company by pure luck.
I think the truth is that a lot of people, especially younger people still finding their way, are insecure about their
own success or place in life. It can be extremely comforting to surround yourself with explanations that nothing
is actually within your control or that others’ success or happiness is the result of randomness. I think this is
why we see the oft-repeated trope (on HN especially) that people who post happy photos on social media must
actually be secretly sad and miserable behind the scenes: It’s a convenient excuse to downplay the happiness
and success of others.
Ignore the extremes. Accept that success isn’t guaranteed. Know that luck is a factor, but it’s not the only
factor. Hard work is your lever to maximize the cards you’ve been dealt. We’re all dealt different cards, but it
still comes down to your own actions in leveraging the hand you’ve been dealt.
Sebb767 on Aug 15, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

> I think this is why we see the oft-repeated trope (on HN especially) that people who post happy photos
on social media must actually be secretly sad and miserable behind the scenes
This is not about success, but about being realistic about what you can expect from your life. Everyone is
going to be unhappy from time to time and everyone will have downs ; this is just not what you usually
see on social media. So when people say this, it's to reduce people's feeling of being inadequate, not to
take away success.
If you think about it, it's actually two sides of the same coin: People only see humongous companies and
insane salaries, but not the years of hard work that went into getting there. Similarly, they only see
happy faces on social media, but not the bad sides that everyone has.
WalterBright on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

> It can be extremely comforting to surround yourself with explanations that nothing is actually within
your control or that others’ success or happiness is the result of randomness.
On the other hand, accepting responsibility for results is empowering, because it means one can be
successful.
I don't see anything happy about deciding one is a hapless victim of others.
smolder on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

The comfort in shifting your locus of control outward comes from relieving the shame of failure,
not from being an overall positive experience. In fact, it's common for people to both take credit
for their successes while blaming their failures on external factors to relieve the shame.
WalterBright on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

Blaming failure on others or external factors doesn't lead to success. It leads to bitterness
and resentment.
smolder on Aug 15, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

Right, I wasn't really disputing that.
godelski on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

There's a saying: the harder I work, the luckier I get.
I read this as the harder you work the more you're able to take advantage of lucky moments. But those lucky
moments still need to happen for you to take advantage of them. I think a lot of people don't like to admit that
luck had anything to do with it because we have a culture that often suggests that it's luck or work but not
some combination. While there are cases on the extreme ends of the spectrum I'm willing to bet that the vast
majority are from a combination of hard work and high luck.
Veritasium did a (pretty obvious) simulation that showed those on the top end up having both high luck and
hard work.[0] I think this should make sense to most people given how the simulation was run.
[0] https://youtu.be/3LopI4YeC4I
bigfudge on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Interestingly though, when asked Americans rate luck as much less important in financial success than other
cultures. Euro countries in particular are more comfortable attributing a higher fraction of their success to luck
than those in the US. And by asked I mean a reasonable well designed study… I can’t find the ref just now but
will post if I do when home again.
robocat on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

It makes perfect sense to have an irrational belief in hard work.
You are likely to have more success if you believe in work. Certainly believing that 100% of outcomes is
luck seems like a bad strategy.
At the level of a society then average beliefs matter. I find some less successful countries seem to obsess
over the role of external influences, fate, god, and chance.
bigfudge on Aug 26, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

This is wonderfully North American. I would judge countries like France, Germany much more
successful than the US because they still have functioning political and cultural life. Those are only
things that can survive if individual financial success is not the only metric used.
fahadkhan on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

> There's this characiture of American culture and the idea of our meritocracy
But earlier
> if I work hard and have a little luck, I'll get by. A little more luck and I'll be successful. A little less, and I
might need to rely on my family or community.
This isn't a meritocracy that you are describing
simonh on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]
Sure it is. Hard work weights probability in your favour and gives you more opportunities. Surely that's
the best anyone can ever hope for? Do you have a system in mind that makes guarantees?
Supermancho on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

A meritocracy isn't about guarantees, other than ranking is by performance not externalities. By
most definitions, a meritocracy is impractical, granted. In a real-world sense, the socio-economic
status of every individual on earth is primarily governed by luck/circumstance. Not to say there
aren't exceptions, but there has to be an inordinate amount of "merit" AND luck to overcome the
initial state, statistically. To whit, a human lifetime is more complex and complicated to navigate,
than the 3 body problem.

Right. Successful people make their own luck.
kergonath on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

> No, it's that if you DON'T work hard, you WON'T get it.
There are plenty of born-rich counter examples. New-rich counter examples as well (see Bitcoin millionaires).
Frankly, this is just as false as the other one.
Never mind the fact that “working hard” depends quite a lot on the beholder. For example, I would challenge a
lot of those self-declared gritty, hard-working ideologists (such as Bezos and quite a few armchair billionaires)
to live a year as a minimum-wage single mother in a city.
In any case, there are lots more hard-working poor than hard-working rich, regardless of how you define
hardness. So it’s about as valuable as “all the winners played the lottery”, i.e., amusing to say but not really a
good way of living.
Anyway, my feeling is that successive people are very good at gaslighting the others to justify their wealth, and
that America has a workaholism problem.

> I wasn't raised to believe that if you work hard you WILL get it. No, it's that if you DON'T work hard, you
WON'T get it.
Reminds me of when the CEO of GM said "What's good for General Motors is good for the country." Except he
didn't say that. The press did a hatchet job on him by reporting it that way. The actual quote is "what was good
for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Erwin_Wilson#General_M...
PaulDavisThe1st on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

you think that making the "and vice versa" explicit ("... and what's good for General Motors is good for
our country") is a hatchet job?

Leaving off crucial parts of the statement makes it a hatchet job.
Just like if someone says "more or less" and the journalist leaves out the "or less".

You believe that the first clause somehow balances the second?
When this (partial) quote is used, it's generally in a context where the first clause is
arguably irrelevant. I don't think it's like your "more or less" analogy. There are not many
corporations that fail to benefit when the country does well, so the first clause is broadly
agreed upon. The second clause, however, is controversial, and has implications that are
quite independent of the first clause.
"It will be sunny today, and tomorrow there will be snow" - if you hear this weather forecast
at 13:00 on a sunny day, the first clause is close to information-free, but the second is very
striking.
So it is with the quote from the head of GM.

> You believe that the first clause somehow balances the second?
It doesn't matter if I believe it or not. It's a hatchet job to selectively misquote people
to pursue the journalist's agenda.

You think it is selective misquoting. I think it's entirely appropriate quoting. We
disagree.
spaetzleesser on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

"I don't know who is learning from their parents that if you work hard you'll get rich."
I read that line a lot from successful people: "I have achieved X. IF I can achieve it, you can too. Let me explain
how. "
prairiedogg on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

> No, it's that if you DON'T work hard, you WON'T get it.
Depends on how much you start with.
dclowd9901 on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

My parents’ attitudes are very much more oriented toward hard work becoming success and that if you haven’t
gotten what you wanted, it’s because you haven’t tried hard enough yet.
In a way, they’re right. I’d love a 911 GT3, and I could almost certainly get one, if only for a short period of
time, and with the benefit of armed robbery.
There’s a lot of things I’ve “chosen” to consider instead of putting everything aside to chase a dream. In more
concrete terms, anyone can have anything they want, but what you have to give up for it matters. And that’s
something I think my parents and people like them don’t think about. Not everyone has the emotional
construction, or even the ability to give up aspects of their life to achieve what they want. I think a large part of
“luck” is when the time comes to make a hard decision like that, some fortunate circumstance made swallowing
that pill a bit easier.
PragmaticPulp on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]

> It was causing me some stress and depression because when you start doing analysis many level deep the only
conclusion is any small variance will simply cause Chaos.
With n-body simulation problems, we don’t actually observe immediate chaotic behavior following small perturbations.
In fact, we can readily simulate these systems with considerable accuracy if we want to spend the compute resources.
For example, simulating our own solar system with far more than 3 bodies in play can be done with a high degree of
accuracy to timescales far beyond our lifetimes.
However, the n-body problem isn’t a good analogy for your sense of personal agency anyway. You aren’t a chunk of
rock floating helplessly through space. You are a human being who can take action to influence your own trajectory.
You can apply pressure and course correct in a feedback loop, unlike a planet hurling through the solar system.
That doesn’t mean you can influence everything, but it it does mean that it’s wrong to assume that your life is chaotic
or that nothing you do matters. (FWIW, The latter feeling is a very classic, and erroneous, thought pattern present in
depressive disorders. Correcting that misconception is a core principle of CBT therapy).
You are not a planet hurtling helplessly through space for billions of years. You’re more like a satellite being launched
optimistically into the right general area, but it still has to use the limited amount of thruster energy onboard to push
itself into the right place. It doesn’t always work exactly as planned, but not using the thrusters at all would assure
failure.
jvanderbot on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

You are more like a ship than a bottle in the sea. And like a ship, require maintenance, helping hands, bravery,
and a destination.
function_seven on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]

I think you’d like Ted Chiang’s short story “Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom”
Touches on these themes and really made me think about the overlap of chaos and (“macro”?)determinism.
https://onezero.medium.com/anxiety-is-the-dizziness-of-freed...
sgregnt on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]

To me it is not surprising that an interviewer would not be satisfied if you attribute your success to luck alone. What
can you contribute to a new work place if you rely purely on luck? It is important to identify how you were in a position
to take advantage of the lucky circumstances that you had...
My two cents: A well thought out design process tries to augment luck with a controlled progress: where you try to
move towards your goals in a systematic, more controlled, way so the final outcome is less dependent on luck but
more dependent on your ability to properly adjust and execute your design plan. It might be that luck was more
important than the process in your case, but that hard to build on, and more importantly, to make any learnings for
the future, it still good to analyze how the process could be made better, how you could better take advantage of the
lucky circumstances you had.
WalterBright on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]

> if you work hard you will get it
That's a misunderstanding. It's working hard on the right things. Working hard digging a hole then filling it up again
will never lead to success.
As for luck, the idea is to put yourself in a position where luck can find you. For example, you'll never meet the partner
of your dreams by never leaving the house.
SubiculumCode on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]

A rain drop forms in the sky and begins to fall. What path it takes, no one knows, but that it lands, we can surely
assume.
DiggyJohnson on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]

I agree. I’m writing a book about why people play MMORPGs, and you just got at the heart of (part of one of my)
theses.
wincy on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

Ugh I think back to my server-first raid boss kills in wow, my giant space battles in EVE Online, my lasting
relationship trauma from being "catfished" before it was even a word on Second Life, and wish I'd just gone to
college or something instead of spending my teens and 20s playing MMOs. What a terrible trap these things are.
bgroat on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Is there an email list where I can subscribe for information about this book/pre-order?
DiggyJohnson on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

Not yet, but I'll start thinking about it. I've never talked to anyone about it other than close friends, I
probably should share more as progress continues.
gavinhoward on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

I think it's great that you're not hyping it, and hope you don't until it's close to ready.
That said, even though I am not an MMORPG player, I'd be interested in seeing it.

Thank you for the encouragement. I'm glad to have this approach validated.
The good part about being so low key about this project is that "small" - though I'd argue
human-to-human scale communication isn't small, it's human scale ;) - feedback like your
comment are extremely encouraging. So far, 0 people have not been interested...which is
awesome.
I've been fascinated to discover that the process of writing a book is (can be) a lot like the
experience of playing an MMORPG. It's a framework that captures your individual
achievement, and that achievement is backed up by legitimately hard work an admirable
ability to set and achieve our goals.
I could go on-and-on... Cheers!
petercooper on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I would also be keen to follow progress on this when you reach such a point.

See my reply to a sibling comment, but long story short: thanks for sharing your interest.
You are on a (very short) list of individuals that I'll include when I start communicating or
publishing some of my progress.
Thanks!
nathanvanfleet on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

That's actually pretty interesting.
I've never talked about this project online, so this comment really does mean a great deal to me. See my
comment to another reply in this thread: but I have a great deal of excitement about this topic.
I think a lot of people would have a hard time answering: "why do you play?"
ksec on Aug 17, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

Very late to the reply. I got a little emotional typing out that story so I didn't check the comments
section for a few days.
Is it because of deterministic outcome? Would be interested to hear more about the book as well.
hippari on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]

Lots of classes function are infeasible to compute, but they're deterministic nevertheless. The whole universe might
not have enough computational power to give you the answers.
PragmaticPulp on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

> Lots of classes function are infeasible to compute, but they're deterministic nevertheless.
Exactly, and it also depends on the timescale and precision you're looking for.
It should be obvious that planets in our own solar system aren't showing up at unpredictable locations after a
few years, even though our solar system has significantly more than 3 bodies in orbit.
The chaotic behavior in these systems shows up eventually but it's a mistake to think that it's chaotic from the
start. We can, and do, predict these systems quite accurately around the starting conditions and time.
The philosophical mistake in the OP's comment is equating a hands-off chaotic system (n-body problem) with a
system that has many feedback loops (a person's life). Planets orbiting in space can't take action to change
their trajectories. Humans navigating their lives can and do take actions to change their trajectories.
Humans can make moves to correct their own course. Planets cannot. Equating the two is a misunderstanding
of personal agency.
m3kw9 on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

If you think about it, the universe did compute the answer it just takes time to get there.
Borrible on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]

>but when I was asked in a Job interview I always attribute to "luck" more than anything else
Reframe that to recognizing potential and realizing it with great success.
timoth3y on Aug 15, 2021 | prev | next [–]

Popular belief, and This paper, imply that the three-body problem is unsolvable. The authors mention Poincaré's work
demonstrating this.
However, they don't mention Sundman's work in the early 1900's proving that the n-body problem can be solved as a
converging power-series.
Sundman's solution is correct, but the series converges very slowly and is impractical.
Since an analytic solution was found over 100 years ago, why are we still debating whether one exists?
isoprophlex on Aug 14, 2021 | prev | next [–]

Weren't there already several solutions known? Wikipedia seems to think so. I find it hard to see if there's anything here that
makes this different from the several cases mentioned on wikipedia. The linked paper was too dense for me, sadly...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem
em-bee on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | next [–]

the wikipedia page lists several solutions for special cases and a general solution, which is unusable.
the article talks about an effective solution, which would mark a major step forward.
ko27 on Aug 14, 2021 | prev | next [–]

How good are we at predicting three body movement today with our computers? This is the question I could never find an
answer too. Can we do it real time, or few years into the future? Can we do it accurately, to an arbitrary precision? Or is it
always fuzzy with statistical outcomes?
db48x on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | next [–]

We can do it accurately, to any precision you care to pay for. Since n-body gravitation is a chaotic system, getting
more precise predictions requires more precise measurements of the current state of the solar system. When it’s not
possible to measure things more precisely, we instead run many simulations with small random perturbations in the
current state, then classify the simulations to get probabilities.
Y_Y on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]

One way to deal with these kinds of issues is to express your initial conditions as intervals (or even distributions) in
the sense that you include the a range of possible values, rather than the most probable one (which is normally
implicitly done). So if you measure the earth to be (6±1)e24 kg, then you work with something that looks like
[5,7]e24 kg i.e. the segment of the number line corresponding to the possible physical realities that led to your
measurement. You'll get a range of different outcomes in the end, and their relative probabilities given your priors. You
can do this exactly for some systems, but usually you'll do some monte carlo and hope it's valid. This is similar to
classical (linear) error propagation where you carry around an "uncertainty", but chaotic systems don't generally allow
you to make the assumption of narrow Gaussians used there.
amelius on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]

The system is chaotic so there is a strong dependence on the initial conditions. I suppose that if you don't know these
precisely, then at some point even the best computer simulation can't help you much.
dekhn on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]

we can simulate the solar system to very high accuracy a few hundred years into the future.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nphys728
aaaaaaaaaaab on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]

It is a chaotic system. Arbitrary small deviations in the initial conditions will result in completely different outcomes.
So your simulation will eventually diverge from reality as you cannot measure the initial conditions exactly.
danwills on Aug 15, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

I do accept what you have said (indeed it's chaos theory dogma that I am mostly still on board with!) but I also
think reality is quite far from binary in whether chaos-theory concepts apply-to-it-or-not, seems a bit like it's
mixed-in everywhere a bit, depending how information is mixing. (I'm calling chaos Class-3 Automata style)
There are, I think still tools that we can build and use even in the face of this type of sensitivity to initial
conditions!
zelphirkalt on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Nitpick + a little more thought: Isn't it more correct to say, that initially slightly different conditions might
(instead of "will") result in a very much different outcome? Does chaotic mean, that two states which only differ
a little must result in vastly different outcomes? I wonder whether there could be states, which are very similar
and some condition drives them to converge again. Or is such a thing impossible?
db48x on Aug 15, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

Yes, though frequently the solutions are very similar to each other. For example, if you plot the future of
an asteroid in 10,000 different simulations, you’ll probably find that in most of them the asteroid remains
in the asteroid belt where it started from, but perhaps in 10% of them it is perturbed enough by Jupiter
that its orbit becomes a Trojan, or some other variety. If you look at the details of the 90% where it stays
in the asteroid belt, you find that while they are all in different orbits from each other, the differences are
not very significant. Just 9,000 rather similar orbits inside the asteroid belt.
“Chaotic” usually means that the difference between two similar starting conditions grows without bound
the longer you run the simulations forward. But orbits are closed loops; everything about an orbit is
periodic. If two orbiting objects start near each other but have different orbital periods, then soon enough
they will be far apart from each other. However, if you keep running time forward then they will end up
right next to each other again. The distance between them is itself periodic, bounding the total error in a
practical sense.
Combine that with the overall stability of our solar system, and you find that most objects tend to stay in
particular orbital families for quite some time. Most objects are near the bottoms of deep potential wells,
and the forces that can push them out of those wells are quite small. It is only once they are pushed near
the boundaries of those wells that rapid changes can begin to happen.
Of course if it were any other way, then there would be nothing left in the asteroid belt by now. Compare
that with Saturn’s rings, which simulations suggest will only last another 100k years, give or take a bit.
They must be a relatively recent phenomena.
wisty on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Often yes. How often happens in practice will usually depend on the size of the solution space.
A chaotic system is pretty much a random number generator, and random number generators can spit
out the same number (or nearby numbers) twice (otherwise they wouldn't be random).
jjgreen on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Not to answer your question, but you may be interested to know that chaotic systems can often be
effectively controlled by small perturbations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_of_chaos
aaaaaaaaaaab on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Indeed, there can be islands of stability in the phase space of chaotical systems.
snowAbstraction on Aug 14, 2021 | prev | next [–]

The photo of Professor Hagai Perets (Left) and Ph.D. student Yonadav Barry Ginat seems to have them in their native
environment: the university's Science and Math library. If you zoom you'll see the Math and Science topics listed on the card
for the book shelves behind them.
lmilcin on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | next [–]

Trust me, mathematicians do not sit in libraries.
archibaldJ on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

they walk and wander around ;)
https://jorgenveisdal.medium.com/the-mathematical-nomad-paul...
https://medium.com/@vovakuzmenkov/poincares-creativity-8e31d...
lmilcin on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

I am sure that there is at least one mathematician who likes to sit in libraries.
But in general there is nothing for a mathematician to do in a library. It is not like you need access to
large number of hard to get books. And if you need access to a book, you probably need a lot of time
with that book.
That is if you even need books at all.
Even when I studied theoretical math I wouldn't use books at all. Problems tend to be easily formulated.
Once I understood the problem I would walk around, lie on the couch, try stuff on the whiteboard or in
my notepad, run experiments on Matlab, meet with friends to discuss the problem over coffee or beer
and so on.
I don't remember spending time in a library or hearing about anybody spending time in a library.
archibaldJ on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

I was looking around but couldn't find the piece my prof sent me 5 years ago.
It was a piece from a mathematician's diary about walking and coming up with proofs. There is
something about a changing enviroment and being on the move that's very fascinating to me.
I guess that one mathematician who likes to sit in libraries probably sits there just for sitting there
;)
joaorico on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

Alain Connes, Fields medalist, talks about going on walks while reading math books in a
particular way (and on how a mathematician works and should read a book) [0]:
"To understand any subject, above all, a mathematician SHOULD NOT pick up a book and
read it.
It is the worst error!
No, a mathematician needs to look in a book, and to read it backwards. Then, he sees the
statement of a theorem. And, well, he goes for a walk. And, above all, he does not look at
the book.
He says, "How the hell could I prove this?"
He goes for his walk, he takes two hours ... He comes back and he has thought about how
he would have proved it. He looks at the book. The proof is 10 pages long. 99% of the
proof, pff, doesn't matter.
Tak!, here's the idea!
But this idea, on paper, it looks the same as everything else that is written. But there is a
place, where this little thing is written, that will immediately translate in his brain through a
complete change of mental image that will make the proof.
So, this is how we operate. Well, at least some of us. Math is not learned in a book, it
cannot be read from a book. There is something active about it, tremendously active.
[...]
It's a personal, individual work."
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qlqVEUgdgo
yarky on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Walking helps thinking, that is a well known fact, which I also learned from a mathematician
who kept sharing in class how many problems he solved while walking his dog. He would
always start his phrases with "while I was walking my dog I realized ...".
There seems to be a lot of research on this topic btw.
todd8 on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I had one famous professor, Gian-Carlo Rota, whose office was covered in stacks of books and
journals; I believe that he was an editor of an AMS publication at the time. The next year I had a
professor for a class in non-commutative ring theory (I sadly can't remember his name off the top
of my head; I do remember that he was a pleasant and brilliant person.), his office was like a
monk's room. There was a desk upon which rested a single sheet of paper with a yellow wooden
pencil.
maxwells-daemon on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Fond memories of running into my math professor walking around campus at 3am...
antonzabirko on Aug 14, 2021 | prev | next [–]

Why is this impactful? Isnt this already established that you can predict random walks with probability?
forgotpwd16 on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | next [–]

Probably its application in the specific problem.
mypastself on Aug 14, 2021 | prev | next [–]

Now if only we could find a way around the sophon block.
Borrible on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | next [–]

Thats easy, a sophon is just a quantum mechanical plot hole that evaporates instantanely with measurement.
Just look very closely.
f6v on Aug 14, 2021 | prev | next [–]

Are Trisolarians happy now?
bpodgursky on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | next [–]

Yes, they are throwing a party in Australia. Everyone is invited.
numpad0 on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

Does that mean we finally get to know how they look like?
midrus on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

I always imagined them as some kind of "plants", given how they're described to replicate/combine and
how they're dried up and stored and later rehydrated...
Borrible on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Here you go:
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/56755/16-amazing-facts-a...
MaanuAir on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

In The Redemption of Time, Baoshu offers his view.
It’s “only” a fan fiction, albeit approved by Liu Cixin.
It nonetheless gives a nice — and as expected — unexpected description of them.
bhay on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]
For me, I pictured them as the water aliens from Futurama's "My Three Suns".
krdl on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

Daleks with a strobe light on top.
taneq on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | prev | next [–]

I just got to that bit, fun times.
rootusrootus on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | prev | next [–]

As someone who just finished the first book in the trilogy and started on the second book yesterday, this is the
comment I came here to see.
nsoonhui on Aug 14, 2021 | prev | next [–]

Coming from a non-physics background, I would like to know how would this help us in predicting the future trajectory of a
three-body system? How does it improve over the current solution techniques?
ThinBold on Aug 14, 2021 | prev | next [–]

While the tone sounds like a university webpage advertising its scholars' results, this does seem to be an interesting
viewpoint. (Unless similar viewpoints have been proposed before.)
This also reminds me of the QR iteration, where you loose track of the matrix entries very quickly (after 2 or 3 steps into the
iteration), but in the end the diagonal does converge to the eigenvalues.
phkahler on Aug 14, 2021 | prev | next [–]

I'd like to see this extended slightly to give a half-life based on the masses or similar.
Another interesting 3-body problem is the quarks in a proton or neutron. These can be critically stable with the resulting
magnetic field adding more stability. But physics as a field has truly abandoned all mechanical models in favor or purely
statistical ones.
anonymousiam on Aug 14, 2021 | prev | next [–]

Apparently also solved by AI less than two years ago.
https://www.livescience.com/ai-solves-three-body-problem-fas...
howenterprisey on Aug 14, 2021 | prev | next [–]

Is it just me, or do the graphs (page 12 and onward) not match up too well? Note that I totally don't know what I'm looking
at.
thayne on Aug 14, 2021 | prev | next [–]

> one cannot simply specify the system evolution over long time-scales.
While practically true, this isn't technically correct. If you knew the masses, velocities, and location with infinite precision and
could perform all operations with infinite precision, (also assuming no external interaction and quantum mechanics doesn't
come into it), you could know the state of the system for long time periods. The problem is we can't measure things that
accurately.
beervirus on Aug 14, 2021 | parent | next [–]

It’s true even with arbitrarily good measurements when you get to the level of quantum mechanics.
amluto on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent | next [–]

If you know the initial wave function (which you can’t measure, but you could in principal choose and set up
three bodies accordingly), then quantum mechanics is deterministic. If you throw the standard model in, you
get a mess, though.
deltasixeight on Aug 14, 2021 | prev | next [48 more]
graderjs on Aug 14, 2021 | prev | next [6 more]
justmedep on Aug 14, 2021 | prev | next [2 more]
cyberpsybin on Aug 14, 2021 | prev [–]

It's an already solved problem given you set the initial conditions.
forgotpwd16 on Aug 14, 2021 | parent [–]

I guess this is downvoted because the initial conditions allude to numerical integration which isn't considered a proper
"solution". Nevertheless, indeed the three-body (as well the n-body albeit with restrictions) has an analytic solution in
form of power series. When people say it doesn't have one they mean in a closed-form. The research here isn't a
solution (it doesn't allow one to find the exact state of the bodies at some specific later time) but rather a stochastic
predictor of the behavior of the system.
tgv on Aug 14, 2021 | root | parent [–]

But a power series is not what I'd call effective, which is what the headline stresses. It's also another type of
solution (a probabilistic one).
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Scientists find an effective solution for the three-body problem (technion.ac.il)

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