PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateSPACE ↓ More info below ↓ Sign Up on Patreon to get access to the Space Time Discord! https://www.patreon.com/pbsspacetime Sign up for the mailing list to get episode notifications and hear special announcements! https://tinyurl.com/yx9cusk5 Check out the Space Time Merch Store https://pbsspacetime.com/ The three body problem is famous for being impossible to solve. But actually it's been solved many times, and in ingenious ways. Some of those solutions are incredibly useful, and some are incredibly bizarre. Hosted by Matt O'Dowd Written by Matt O'Dowd Graphics by Leonardo Scholzer & Adriano Leal Post Production: Yago Ballarini, Max Willians, Pedro Osinski Directed by: Andrew Kornhaber Executive Producers: Eric Brown & Andrew Kornhaber End Credits Music by J.R.S. Schattenberg: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRl6-nb4iOnsij-vnpAjp0Q Physics - and arguably all of science changed forever in 1687 when Isaac Newton published his Principia. Within it were equations of motion and gravity that transformed our erratic-seeming cosmos into a perfectly tuned machine of clockwork predictability. Given the current positions and velocities of the bodies of the solar system, Newton’s equations could be used in principle be used to calculate their locations at any distant time, future or past. I say “in principle” because the reality isn’t so simple. Despite the beauty of Newton’s equations, they lead to a simple solution for planetary motion in only one case - when two and only two bodies orbit each other sans any other gravitational influence in the universe. Add just one more body and in most cases all motion becomes fundamentally chaotic - there exists no simple solution. This is the three-body problem, and we’ve been trying to solve it for over 300 years. Special Thanks to Our Patreon Supporters: Big Bang Supporters: Alexander Tamas David Barnholdt David Nicklas Fabrice Eap John S Juan Benet Morgan Hough Quasar Supporters: Christina Oegren Mark Heising Vinnie Falco Hypernova Chuck Zegar Danton Spivey Donal Botkin Edmund Fokschaner Hank S John Hofmann John Pollock John R. Slavik Jordan Young Joseph Salomone Julian Tyacke Justin Ash Mathew Matthew O'Connor Syed Ansar Timothy McCulloch Hypernova Supporters: A G Adrian Hatch Adrien Molyneux AlecZero Andreas Nautsch Angela Prigge Bradley Jenkins Brandon labonte Craig Stonaha Dan Warren Daniel Lyons David Bethala DFaulk Eric Kiebler Frederic Simon Geoffrey Short Graydon Goss Greg Smith John Funai John Griffith John Robinson Jonathan Nesfeder Josh Thomas Kevin Lee Kevin Warne Kyle Hofer Malte Ubl Michael Conroy Nick Virtue Nick Wright Patrick Sutton Paul Rose Randall Sylvia Robert Ilardi Scott Gossett Sean Warniaha Sipke Schoorstra Steve Bradshaw Tatiana Vorovchenko Tim Stephani Tonyface Tybie Fitzhugh Yurii Konovaliuk