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A comment on Two potentially life-friendly planets found orbiting a nearby star. Parent comment

Re:Two potentially life-friendly planets found orbiting a ne... by losvedir on Tuesday June 18, 2019 @08:29PM (#20219840)
I don't understand your opposition to the name. The three body problem is so named precisely because it's intractable. In physics with two bodies you can perfectly model the evolution of a system, but as soon as you add a third it becomes chaotic and requires numerical simulation to approximate solutions.
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Re:Two potentially life-friendly planets found orbiting a ne... by CWuestefeld on Wednesday June 19, 2019 @09:30AM (#20223134)
I don't understand your opposition to the name. The three body problem is so named

Look at my first objection, that the problem described in the book has (at least) FOUR bodies. Yet the idea that it's a three-body problem is pervasive throughout the book.

Surely that in itself is enough to justify some aggravation.

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