Wolfram Demonstrations Project

13,000+ Open Interactive Demonstrations
Powered by Notebook Technology »

Planar Three-Body Problem

Initializing live version
Download to Desktop

Requires a Wolfram Notebook System

Interact on desktop, mobile and cloud with the free Wolfram Player or other Wolfram Language products.

Trajectories of three point masses , , interacting via Newtonian force fields in 2D (planar three-body problem). This Demonstration allows you to vary the initial positions and velocities of the three bodies and their masses. We start the dance with a choreography by Chenciner and Montgomery.

Contributed by: Michael Trott (February 2016)
Suggested by: Stephen Wolfram
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA

Snapshots

Details

The three-body problem is one of the simplest mechanical systems that exhibit nonintegrability and chaos. (The two-body problem with retardation is conceptually simpler but trickier to calculate.) Depending on the initial conditions, the system exhibits periodic orbits, escape to infinity in finite time, collision singularities, triple collisions, quasi-bound states, …

Embed Code

Take advantage of the Wolfram Notebook Emebedder for the recommended user experience.

Related Demonstrations More by Author
Browse all topics
Feedback (field required)
Email (field required) Name
Occupation Organization
Note: Your message & contact information may be shared with the author of any specific Demonstration for which you give feedback.
Send