Physik · Dreikörperbahnen

Warum sich drei kreisende Körper selten wiederholen

Die Regel

Drei gleiche Massen, nur Gravitation. Fast jede Bahn zerfällt; einige wenige wiederholen sich für immer.

Läuft nach einem Klick von YouTube.

Warum es funktioniert

Zwei Körper unter Gravitation umkreisen einander für immer auf derselben Ellipse. Füge einen dritten mit gleicher Masse hinzu, und fast jeder Start endet in einem Durcheinander, meist mit einem hinausgeschleuderten Körper. Doch einige seltene Starts schließen sich und wiederholen sich, wie die Acht.

aᵢ = G · Σⱼ≠ᵢ mⱼ · (rⱼ − rᵢ) ÷ |rⱼ − rᵢ|³für die Acht: drei gleiche Massen, Drehimpuls null

Bau es selbst

Python 3 · numpy · matplotlib

Die Acht aus ihren veröffentlichten Startwerten, drei Perioden in kleinen Leapfrog-Schritten.

three-body-orbits.py
"""Three bodies: the figure-eight orbit, from the starting values computed by Carles Simo
(in Chenciner and Montgomery, 2000). G = 1, three masses of 1.
Run: python three-body-orbits.py   (needs: pip install numpy matplotlib)
"""
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.style.use("dark_background")

x1 = np.array([0.97000436, -0.24308753])
V = np.array([-0.93240737, -0.86473146])  # the velocity of body 3
pos = np.array([x1, -x1, [0.0, 0.0]])
vel = np.array([-V / 2, -V / 2, V])
period, dt = 6.32591398, 0.0005
turn = 0  # degrees to turn the first velocity by (the film breaks the eight with 15)

a = np.radians(turn)
vel[0] = [vel[0, 0] * np.cos(a) - vel[0, 1] * np.sin(a), vel[0, 0] * np.sin(a) + vel[0, 1] * np.cos(a)]


def pull(p):
    """Each body's acceleration: the sum of the other two's gravity, G*m / r**2 towards each"""
    acc = np.zeros_like(p)
    for i in range(3):
        for j in range(3):
            if i != j:
                d = p[j] - p[i]
                acc[i] += d / np.linalg.norm(d) ** 3
    return acc


track = []
acc = pull(pos)
for _ in range(int(3 * period / dt)):  # three periods, leapfrog steps (they keep the energy well)
    vel += acc * dt / 2
    pos += vel * dt
    acc = pull(pos)
    vel += acc * dt / 2
    track.append(pos.copy())
track = np.array(track)

colours = ["#5eead4", "#f0abfc", "#f5c76b"]
plt.figure(figsize=(7, 4))
for body in range(3):  # all three run along the same track, a third of a period apart
    plt.plot(track[:, body, 0], track[:, body, 1], color=colours[body], linewidth=1)
plt.scatter(track[-1, :, 0], track[-1, :, 1], c=colours, s=80, zorder=3)
plt.axis("equal")
plt.axis("off")
plt.show()

# Try: turn = 15 -> the three tracks no longer close; the eight falls apart

Probier: Setze turn = 15, wie im Film: Die drei Bahnen schließen sich nicht mehr.

Lerne dieses Skript Zeile für Zeile, mit Übungen und einem Quiz → · starte es in Google Colab (auf Englisch) →

Die Mathematik, wie der Film sie erzählt

Die Notizen zum Film lesen (von YouTube, auf Englisch)

Three equal masses pull on each other with nothing but Newton's gravity. For two bodies the motion is an ellipse, forever; for three there is no formula at all, and almost every start ends in a tangle — one body is usually flung away. Yet a handful of starting conditions close on themselves exactly.

The first act is the figure-eight, found numerically by Cris Moore in 1993 and proved to exist by Chenciner and Montgomery in 2000: three bodies chasing each other around one figure-eight track, always equally spaced in time. Then one body's velocity is nudged by 15 degrees. Nothing else changes, but the orbit is unstable to that nudge, so within seconds the ballet becomes chaos — and that is the normal state of three bodies.

From the chaos the film gathers them into two more of the periodic solutions catalogued by Šuvakov and Dmitrašinović in 2013, the "moth" and the "yin-yang", each broken again by the same nudge, before the figure-eight returns. Everything is integrated with an adaptive 8th-order method at relative tolerance 1e-9; the periodic orbits were checked to return to their starting state to about one part in a thousand after one period. The small white dot is the centre of mass — it never moves, because the total momentum is zero.

Aus der Beschreibung von Three Bodies, Pure Gravity (auf Englisch).

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