The 3 body problem has been around since Isaac Newton in 1687, but it’s remained largely unsolvable. When three or more celestial objects affect one another’s gravity, their movements become unpredictable or chaotic. It’s described as “the orbital dance of three celestial objects,” with so many variables it’s impossible to accurately calculate the motions mathematically.
Until the 19th century, the unpredictability could cause fatalities as mariners couldn’t always accurately find their location based on the Moon and stars. Our Moon, Earth, and Sun are a three-body problem, leading to inaccurate lunar navigation tables. The Sun’s gravity pulls on the Moon slightly, which throws calculations off.
Recently, the 3 body problem has been receiving a lot of attention thanks to the Netflix Sci-Fi series of that name. And in recent years, AI has found thousands of potential solutions rapidly. Still, the solutions are only theoretically stable and subject to changes from the forces of other celestial objects at any time.
Spoiler alert: If you haven’t seen the show, you may not want to read further.
The 3 Body Problem Begins with an Attack on Science
The Netflix series is loosely based on a trilogy of books by Chinese author Cixin Liu called “Remembrance of Earth’s Past.” The story confronts the brutal attacks on scientists during the Cultural Revolution in China in 1966. Disturbingly, young people were often the attackers, and the show’s opening doesn’t hold back from showing the grim murder of a professor who refused to refute western physics. Unfortunately, this part is based on real-life historic events.
As the show progresses into fiction, a siege on science is one of the main themes of the show, but not only from humans.
What Happens When Science is Broken?
An advanced extraterrestrial race called the San-Ti or Trisolarans (after three suns in their star system) is not about to allow humans to make scientific progress. To throw everything off, they put a wrench of sorts in the system. As a result, particle accelerators worldwide find results have gone totally haywire. Even the stars in the sky wink out a Morse code in a shocking display of total control.
“Science is broken,” says scientist Saul Durand.
Trailer from Netflix:
Not-So-Nice Answer to The Fermi Paradox
Predictably, these ETs from Alpha Centauri are not friendly despite having unimaginable technological abilities. Why? It’s because of the unpredictability of the three-body problem on their home world. Due to being caught in the gravity of multiple suns, their planet is in chaos and dying. But once they learn about nearby Earth through a surprising plot twist, they start acting with an intention much like the brutal young people during the brutal ‘Revolution’ in China.
The overall message is that scientific knowledge will be suppressed by those who seek power, whatever their species. Certainly, that’s a trait for humans. Whether or not that would hold for an advanced ET race remains unknown, which brings up the hypothetical answers to the Fermi paradox. Why haven’t ETs made contact? Everyone has their own opinions, positive or negative.
In this series, the answer to the paradox takes a disturbing turn. Yet why would such an advanced and adaptable species not simply make their way for one of any other number of inhabitable planets throughout the galaxy? Instead, an imaginative conspiracy against science takes place. Does this chain of events make sense outside of an entertaining science-fiction plot?
For all science offers us, we can’t seem to avoid an arms race, whether against each other or an imagined enemy.
Video by Words in Time (Contains spoilers):
A Triangle Solves the Three-Body Solution
Back to real life: There are special cases where the three-body solution has a solution, such as the Lagrangian case. That’s where three bodies form an equilateral triangle, and all are in perfect balance, like a pyramid.
Points along the triangle are called Lagrange Points. Some have speculated these would be an ideal place for extraterrestrials to hide out and observe their surroundings. In fact, NASA uses them for spacecraft today, such as the James Webb Space Telescope.
Lagrange points are stable places to orbit, and all planets have them (see video below).
Video by It’s Just Astronomical:
A Trinity Solution
Another solution for the three-body problem is called the “restricted” case, where two large bodies are orbited by a small satellite. This configuration remains stable because the third object doesn’t exert gravitational force on the other two.
“In this case, the satellite resembles a child living with two parents, a configuration that often, but not always, displays stability,” writes Avi Loeb.
These configurations are much like the Trinity, seen in world spiritual beliefs since ancient times. It’s a stable configuration and underlies multiple creation stories: Father, Mother, and Son. Or Mind, Spirit, and Body united in One consciousness.
There are multiple ways to look at the meanings yet the symbol is important across the world from ancient times. But there has also been a real conspiracy for thousands of years to force people to follow rigid religious belief systems. As with an attack on science, could the attack on people’s spirituality have delayed potential enlightenment?
The number three holds a special significance that scientists like Tesla were aware of. He believed 3, 6, and 9 were “the key to the universe,” which might unlock the secrets of the cosmos. Tesla also knew there was something critical to the aether or dark matter underlying it all: the spirit by another way of thinking.
And Loeb went on to suggest that dark matter might hold secrets for traveling across the galaxy.
“After all, we know that the expansion of the universe is accelerating due to the repulsive gravity generated by an unknown substance called ‘dark energy.’ If we could bottle this substance in a thin enclosure, we might possess a negative mass object that could enable our future exploration of interstellar space,” Loeb wrote.
This mysterious substance is everywhere yet remains unseen like a silent observer. Without the omniscient observer, would the illusion of the material world fall apart?
As a side note, CERN is activating their Large Hadron Collider on April 8 to investigate dark matter, which they say is a coincidence. Will they find unexpected answers?
The Solar Eclipse
As for the Netflix series, it does venture into the spiritual realm. After all, when science is broken, where does that leave a scientist? Yet, to save the world, science is held superior to mysticism. Another makes a dark ‘joke’ about God, leaving you wondering about the possible meanings.
In the show’s third episode, the three suns in the virtual world all line up in a triple eclipse. Today, people are pointing to the real solar eclipse on April 8 as a sign of something ominously spiritual or religious.
Whenever the universe acts in such an incredibly precise and predictable way, despite the chaos, it’s a reminder. Things are never entirely in our control. Some things will remain mysterious and unsolvable. Chaos surrounds us all. And yet, this gives all the more reason why our relatively stable existence is itself miraculous. Given that scientists know everything tends to chaos and disorder, how is there such spectacular order and symmetry in nature at all?
More about the eclipse by CBS News:
Featured image: Pixabay/Placidplace