ThreeBody Illustrates some solutions of the 3 bodies problem in celestial mechanic.
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celestial planet celestial mechanic planet trajectory planet movement mechanic

ThreeBody Description

Illustrates some solutions of the 3 bodies problem in celestial mechanic. ThreeBody is an application working in Version 1.02 under Mac OS 7.6-9.2 or Mac OS X in Classic mode. In Version 2.01, it's working under Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard, as well as under Windows 98/XP/Vista. It's a scientific program for a general public: it's aim is to remain us a fundamental idea, i.e. that even in the case of a perfectly deterministic problem like the law of gravitation (le law in 1/r^2 from Isaac Newton), as soon as we have more than two bodies (planets), one cannot predict the asymtotic behavior (in the long range) of the system. So one may say that even in the case of a simple deterministic situation, the liberty is still alive.ThreeBody illustrate 3 cases in the situation where the 3 planets have the same mass. The two first cases are "classical" ones and very special in the sense that the trajectories are close and "stable":1. Case of Lagrange (18the century).2. Case of A. Chenciner & R. Montgomery.(1999)3. Arbitrary case.In the last situation you can specify your initial conditions and discover the infinite variety of the possible trajectories.

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