Por qué tres cuerpos en órbita casi nunca se repiten
Tres masas iguales, solo gravedad. Casi todas las órbitas se deshacen; unas pocas, muy raras, se repiten para siempre.
Se reproduce desde YouTube tras hacer clic.
Por qué funciona
Dos cuerpos bajo la gravedad giran uno alrededor del otro en la misma elipse para siempre. Añade un tercero de la misma masa y casi cualquier inicio acaba en un enredo, normalmente con un cuerpo expulsado. Aun así, unos pocos inicios, muy raros, se cierran sobre sí mismos y se repiten, como el ocho.
aᵢ = G · Σⱼ≠ᵢ mⱼ · (rⱼ − rᵢ) ÷ |rⱼ − rᵢ|³para el ocho: tres masas iguales, momento angular cero
Constrúyelo tú
Python 3 · numpy · matplotlibEl ocho a partir de sus valores iniciales publicados, tres periodos en pequeños pasos de salto de rana (leapfrog).
"""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
Prueba: Pon turn = 15, como en el vídeo: las tres trayectorias ya no se cierran.
Aprende este script línea a línea, con ejercicios y un cuestionario → · ejecútalo en Google Colab (en inglés) →
Las matemáticas, tal como las cuenta el vídeo
Lee las notas del propio vídeo (de YouTube, en inglés)
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.
De la descripción de Three Bodies, Pure Gravity (en inglés).
Shorts
Fuentes
- Three-body problem (Wikipedia)
- A. Chenciner, R. Montgomery, “A remarkable periodic solution of the three-body problem in the case of equal masses”, Annals of Mathematics 152 (2000)
- M. Šuvakov, V. Dmitrašinović, “Three classes of Newtonian three-body planar periodic orbits”, Physical Review Letters 110 (2013)