This is one of those headlines that's more obscuring than enlightening. We knew a bunch of ways that you could arrange three gravitational bodies and have them be in a stable orbit around each other. This adds 12,000 more. However, a general solution is still incredibly complicated, and the Trisolarans would still like to have a little chat with us in Australia some time.
this post was submitted on 24 Sep 2023
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Title is wrong. Unsolvable means no general closed form solution. That doesn't mean that single constellations cannot be proven stable.
There is for example a trivial solution to the n-body problem. Arrange all bodies equidistant on a circle and have them move at the speed that keeps them on the circle.
Damn it, I just started Cixin's book and now these jerks are going to spoil it;)
I guess we'll just go with the first one.
Now onto the four body problem!
Wsn't it solved long ago? There's even an old KSP mod 'Pricipia' for it.
You can simulate a specific arrangement of n-bodies, where n > 2. Depending on how accurate you want it to be, you may need a supercomputer.
If n = 2, then you can work it out on a napkin. If n = 1, you can draw a circle, point at it, and say "I figured it out!"
So they mean there's no general solution. That doesn't mean that we can't find specific solutions.
As for your notion of solved, that's solved in a numerical sense.
Spoiler alert..?
Isn't this already solved by total gravitational mass anyway? I'm not understanding what this article even means. You have 3 bodies that are constantly losing mass, and any difference in equilibrium means they fall out of orbit with each other. 3 bodies of exactly or near the density would decay at the same rate. I'm a laymen, but help me out here.