The whole point of Netflix’s 3 Body Problem, based on Cixin Liu’s book trilogy, is that the three-body problem is unsolvable by physicists. But why can’t it be solved?
Everybody seems to be talking about 3 Body Problem, the new Netflix series based on Cixin Liu’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past book trilogy. Fewer people are talking about the two series’ namesake: The unsolvable physics problem of the same name.
This makes sense, because it’s confusing. In physics, the three-body problem attempts to find a way to predict the movements of three objects whose gravity interacts with each of the others — like three stars that are close together in space. Sounds simple enough, right? Yet I myself recently pulled up the Wikipedia article on the three-body problem and closed the tab in the same manner that a person might stagger away from a bright light. Apparently the Earth, sun, and moon are a three-body system? Are you telling me we don’t know how the moon moves? Scientists have published multiple solutions for the three-body problem? Are you telling me Cixin Liu’s books are out of date?
All I’d wanted to know was why the problem was considered unsolvable, and now memories of my one semester of high school physics were swimming before my eyes like so many glowing doom numbers. However, despite my pains, I have readied several ways that we non-physicists can be confident that the three-body problem is, in fact, unsolvable. Reason 1: This is a special definition of ‘unsolvable’
The three-body problem is extra confusing, because scientists are seemingly constantly finding new solutions to the three-body problem! They just don’t mean a one-solution-for-all solution.
