does classical mechanics always fail to predict or retrodict for 3 or more Newtonian gravity bodies? Rich Murray 2011.02.18
Hello Steven V Johnson, Can I have a free copy of the celestial mechanics software to run on my Vista 64 bit PC? In fall, 1982, I wrote a 200-line program in Basic for the Timex-Sinclair $100 computer with 20KB RAM that would do up to 4 bodies in 3D space or 5 in 2D space, about 1000 steps in an hour, saving every 10th position and velocity -- I could set it up to reverse the velocities after the orbits became chaotic after 3 1/2 orbits from initial perfect symmetry as circles about the common center of gravity, finding that they always maintained chaos, never returning to the original setup -- doubling the number of steps while reducing the time interval by half never slowed the the evolution of chaos by 3 1/2 orbits -- so I doubted that there is any mathematical basis for the claim that classical mechanics predicts the past or future evolution of any system with over 2 bodies, leading to a conjecture that no successful algorithm exists, even without any close encounters. Has this been noticed by others? Rich Murray rmfor...@gmail.com 505-819-7388 1943 Otowi Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505 On Fri, Feb 18, 2011 at 4:30 PM, OrionWorks - "Steven V Johnson" <svj.orionwo...@gmail.com> wrote: > Just a brief side-comment... > > Some of this "lingo" is fascinating stuff to me. Having performed a > lot of theoretical computer simulation work on my own using good'ol > fashion Newtonian based Celestial Mechanics algorithms, where > typically I use "a = 1/r^2", I noticed orbital pattern behavior > transforms into something RADICALLY different, such as if I were to > change the classical algorithm to something like "a = 1/r^3". You can > also combine both of them like "a = 1/r^2 +/- 1/r^3" within the same > computer algorithm. That produces interesting side effects too. I'm > still trying to get a handle on it all. > > Regards > Steven Vincent Johnson > www.OrionWorks.com > www.zazzle.com/orionworks
