Three-Body Problem in 3D

Initializing live version

In the classic three-body problem, point masses with initial positions and velocities can result in very complicated trajectories.

Contributed by: Jeff Bryant and José Martin‐Garcia (February 2016)
Based on a program by: Enrique Zeleny
Open content licensed under CC BY-NC-SA

Snapshots

The equation of motion is

where is the acceleration of the body, is the mass, and is the vector connecting the masses and .

Reference

[1] J. C. Sprott, Elegant Chaos: Algebraically Simple Chaotic Flows, Singapore: World Scientific, 2010 pp. 121–123. www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/7183# t=aboutBook.


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