Are you watching “3 Body Problem” on Netflix?

I don't watch a lot of TV so I didn't know this was going on. A colleague of mine ask me about the three body problem because she's a TV watcher. She wanted me to break it down. But the explanation ended abruptly because she doesn't believe the Earth is a sphere. It saved A LOT of time!

I had a three body problem once. Luckily, I know people who discreetly take care of that sort of thing.

"where is your gravitational allegiance?" with no context is my new fav question to ask people

Chuck is me in my high school science classes: “right, right, uh huh, it’s the… got it yeah because of the thing - right, okay…. Ahhhh….”

Goes perfectly with the saying, "Two's company, three's a crowd".

I love it how Chuck sometimes says "Gotcha" but his face tells you "I don't get it" 😃

I can't watch Neil deGrasse Tyson now without thinking about that Key & Peele skit 🤣🤣

Waaaay late to the conversation, but a student of mine wondered if the liquid core of earth acts as a reset of Jupiter's brief pull. Kinda like how pool water eventually settles after you jump in.

the small animations in between are really helpful

Isaac Newton solved it in a cave! With a box of apples!

I love Neil for how he also brings up all these side notes while explaining.

I just stumbled upon this, and I have absolutely no idea why this matters to mere mortals, seeing as things seem to remain on course, but I am SO GLAD to know about the three body problem ANYWAY. I’ll be standing the grocery store, completely forgetting the fifth thing on the shopping list I left at home, and I’ll be able to say to myself, “Ah yes! I forgot why I’m here, next to the melons, but at least I remembered the Three Body Problem!!”

"i had no need of that hypothesis" Still one of the best burns in history.

In June ‘22 I was lucky enough to meet and talk to Neil before a show in London, if anyone is wondering how he is off camera- he is the exact same as this, proper top bloke.

Watch 3 Body Problem!!! SUCH an awesome sci-fi story!!! The first season barely even scratches the surface!

Having more views than subscribers after a week shows the quality of this channel.

All I heard in my head was Christofer Walken saying, “I need more calculus.” 😂😂

"I'm in love with two stars and I don't know what to do. Which way do I turn?" 😂😂😂😂😂😂

I’ve never seen this channel but man I love watching these two guys talk about the three body problem

I can notice the change to your shows 'format' and really appreciate the sacrifice and humility. The strategy is working. Good job for all those hard conversations. ;)

Adopting “where is my gravitational allegiance?!?” into my lexicon *immediately*

I love how Neil LOVES explaining stuff and the other guy (I don't know his name) loves listening and agreeing. They are perfect for each other

My followup question would be regarding the Star Wars example. Would it really be a stable system to have two suns orbiting each other in the first place? What would prevent them from absorbing one another?

There's a different kind of 3 body problem in chemical kinetics. It basically says that simultaneous three body collisions are highly improbably, so they can (almost) be ignored, and chemical mechanism (nearly) always occur via two-body collisions, even if three reactants are involved. If three reactants are involve then the mechanism occurs via some kind of sequence of two-body collisions rather than by a true three-body collisions. Put another way, in chemistry, mechanisms that truly rely on the simultaneous collision of more than two bodies (which could be either atoms or molecules) are extremely rare. There's also a problem with unimolecular reactions, which are reactions that seem to occur without interaction of a second body. I won't delve much further into this problem here except to note that true unimolecular reactions are also rare. (This is unlike the problem of radioactive decay, which is like an ideal unimolecular reaction, not requiring interaction with a third body somewhere along the way.) There is something called unimolecular rate theory, but generally these unimolecular mechanisms rely on two-body collisions somewhere along the way, which activates one of the collicion participants into a metastable state that takes some significant time after the two body collision before something happens, which typically would be either an isomerization of a dissociation. Also, unimolecular rate theory usually applies to molecules containing more than two atoms because energy must slosh around the molecule in different ways before a statistically lucky event happens when the energy sloshes into motion that makes something interesting happen, such as the breaking of a chemical bond.

I'm a theoretical physics graduate (experiments scare me! So I value the work of the experimentalists immensely) and my heroes of the craft were the Frenchmen of the 17- and 1800s. Lagrange, Laplace, Fourier, Poisson, Cauchy, Galois and Poincaré. Even Napoleon was a mathematician! Their work is sublime. Nice show case of "the Newton of France (Laplace)"

'Sir, I had no need for that hypothesis' 'Oooohhh that's a mic droppp' 🤣🤣🤣

These are my favourite ones ❤ Thank you

When I took computational physics in university this was one of the coding problems we did. One of our objectives was to see if we could find initial conditions such that a stable orbit could be initially achieved. I honestly had more fun just watching their trajectories though.

So funny, I'm a physics tutor at my local community College. Yesterday my boss asked me, "hey your a physics guy, have you seen 3 body?" I told her I have not, but I'll watch a science video on it. And who better to talk about it than my man, Dr. Tyson ❤

Its always a pleasure listening to Dr. Tyson. I just want to request a proper explanation on Time Dilation. I still dont get it. If time is supposed to be relative and constant, how does gravity slow it down? Time is not something Tangible how does it get affected by gravity?

Fascinating breakdown of the three-body problem and its implications for understanding our solar system's stability! The blend of historical insights with complex astrophysics beautifully demonstrates how theoretical advancements can unravel cosmic mysteries. 🌌

Credit to Chuck for listening to Neil saying tug and tugging over and over and not snickering. 😂🎉

Tyson: "Isaac Newton solved it" Chuck : "Okay!" Tyson: "My boy" Chuck" "That's your man" This kind of chemistry in any talk shows always promises you good conversation. Good talk. Congrats

Why are there so few people who just want to learn all the facts about life space science etc and then share it like Neil. Your one of the greatest people I know of in my lifetime. Thanks for sharing with us Neil.

You guys strike sparks of awe in my mind & make me laugh out loud. Thank you You have my love and support

Imagine being so smart that you invent a math

I feel like this cannot be stressed enough: The problem here is that the "solution" is chaotic, it's not that the behaviour cannot be computed/calculated or by all practical means "solved". It's just that there is no NICE solution and that initial values matter a lot. So for instance, you can perfectly numerically simulate the behaviour of the entire solar system to predict the position of each object in like 10000 (or N) years provided you have enough infomation regarding current masses and positions. The system is still deterministic! it's not something like quantum mechanics where we literally can only predict probabilities. UPDATE: Ok, after reading the comments I realize that this being cahotic implies more than just "oh you just need to throw more computation at it". In order to predict the behavior of a chaotic system you need arbitrary precision for *each step of the simulation* and so the errors start compounding. This means that even using the most advanced computers that we could possibly build it wouldn't be enough to accurately predict the movement of bodies! (at least not with 100.00% certainity and of course specially when there are many bodies that influence each others equally) (butterfly effect).

As a mechanical engineer, this reminds me of the predictable single pendulum vs chaotic double pendulum problem

Since it's so chaotic, can we use that for an encryption generator?

So if you study hard enough and devote yourself to completely understanding the subject, you can become a Master Perturbation Theorist.

For every like I’ll study for 1.1 hrs 😂

I love that these two are still doing their thing, and I hope we get to continue watching them educate and entertain the both young and young at heart for many years to come.

Always nice to have a book made into television. Ten times more watchable.

Physics Professors and High School Physics teachers take note and learn from Neil and Chuck. Making Science even half this engaging and understandable would create a whole generation of kids passionate about this incredible discipline! Totally love you guys - you have a brilliant chemistry and it’s such a joy to watch you. Who knew that delving into big questions like how our Universe works, what’s our place in the universe and what are the fundamental building blocks of the Universe could be such fun ❤

Thank you for the B-rolls, they are incredibly helpful for visualizing this, thought I have no idea about the Math behind it.

Love it. Thanks for the explanation!

Hi Startalk, excellent content! Would those infinitely small differences in relevant potential between the three individual bodies would be the answer? Unified entanglement in a perfect grounding environment - a vacuum - the centres of gravity could have a weak influencer of relevant change by lensing to aggregate pressure providing temporary unification of bodies through vibration…

About 18 hogs will get rid of your 3 body problem.

Mr Tyson are one of the few persons on this planet that explains the "Three-Body Problem" so that anyone (like no other) can and will understand it's complexity. Very well spoken.

Question for Chuck: Do you get a backgrounder first on anything discussed on StarTalk, or do you approach each topic cold like most of the audience does? Really enjoyed this one!

What's the device on the right of the top shelf? It looks very interesting.

*watched 3 Body Problem....based upon the title alone we started watching this thinking it was gonna be an in depth take on the calculus and any new scientific discoveries...we were wrong in our assumption but still pleasantly surprised...can't wait for the conclusion.

I remember trying to tackle this problem in a senior level math class. It was a course on mathematical models, and we all had to pick some problem to present to the class. Someone did traffic analysis for highways, etc. It is so easy to state the problem in English, yet unsolvable. The system ends up taking 18 degrees of freedom (3 objects x 3 dimensions x 2 to count position and velocity) The final week of the semester, the teacher points me to a book that has the definitive mathematical proof that the system is unsolvable.

The thing is, a planet in a 3 star system like the Centauris would likely only orbit one star system, not be shared between them all. (The Trisolarans are from a planet orbiting the Centauri stars, but in reality Trisolaris would probably only be orbiting the Alpha Centauri AB system or Proxima Centauri [Alpha Centauri C]) Proxima Centauri has two known planets, Proxima b and Proxima d, while Alpha Centauri A may have a neptune sized planet in its habitable zone. Alpha Centauri A and B orbit far enough for A to have its own habitable zone, but close enough (in addition to B's much smaller mass at 0.9 Solar masses) that B does not maintain its own stable planetary orbit as far as we know. If Trisolaris is larger than Earth, its likely this Neptune sized planet within orbit around Alpha Centauri A, if its similar sized, its likely Proxima b in orbit around Proxima Centauri. Proxima b is an earth sized world and its within the habitable zone. However, Cixin Liu would have had no way of knowing any of this, as the first of these planets to be discovered wasnt seen until nearly a decade after the publication of The Three Body Problem, and neither would the researchers who came up with the scientific problem.

That is actually one of the better shows of this year, 3 Body Problem.

an explanation of the three body problem from one of our favourite online teacher our personal astrophysicist, thank you Neil 🥰

For some reason, I can listen to this over and over again. I still don’t know what they are talking about, but I can listen over and over again!

Every single person who WATCHED 3 Body NEEDS to read the series. Its incredible. Excellent voice actors on Audible. I travel a lot for my job and I was just floored.

EXCELLENT SOUND BITE!!!! "Give me two fists here, ok? I'm feeling this one" 6:39 hahahahahaha

I have been Patiently and Diligently checking the Star Talk channel every day since I watched 3 Body Problem waiting to hear NDT’s take on it! I’m excited to hear this

I love when people take the time to educate those of us who struggle to grasp complex topics. Thank you 🙏🏿 🙂

Is there any similarity between the unsolvable chaos of an unrestricted three body system and the chaos of the atomic structure in quantum physics? Dr Tyson's description made me think of how its difficult to predict the positions of atomic and subatomic particles. I am not a mathematician or an astrologer, just curious.

how big in relation to the larger objects does the small one have to be before a restricted three body system becomes chaotic?

Neil deGrasse Tyson feels like that really fun uncle who is always a pleasure to be around & always keeps you thinking 🔥

The predictive model is very sensitive to initial conditions as explained by Neil but also what catches up to you is that averages of forces over a time slice will also have some amount of imprecision and while each time slice will usually cancel out their imprecisions that is not always the case where you get streaks that cause precision to decline and that problem also grows over time as you calculate more and more slices of time where what are basically rounding errors start to skew the predictive results compared to the actual system being modelled.

I do like the conversations these guys have.

I remember having to do Laplace transforms at University... I suck at maths so hard though and boy was that class a huge struggle.

Thank you thank you thank you. I adore such conversations. Former academic, here, missing these interactions. Gotta embrace the chaos.

Beautifully described. "You can calculate incrementally what's happening," but the system is chaotically dependent on conditions. Also, it's why even with the Sun, Earth, Moon system, Newton was unable to reliably solve the Longitude problem. This gets particularly interesting when resonance is added. Many of the planets (and moons) in our Solar System are in orbits that put them in resonance with each other. That very significantly delays the onset of chaos.

Unfortunately, that series will not have a season 2 or 3 because it would be too expensive.

Niel- I love the breakdown of the Star Wars two sun problem. Now that brings me to a wonder from childhood. This would be an awesome thought experiment. I’ve always wondered about the Dark Crystals solar system and how UNSTABLE that system seems to be. The planetarium in Ulga’s house and the great conjunction first sparked my interest in looking up at the cosmos. How would three to four stars tug on Thra??? Thanks for sharing.

Brilliant explanation. Love these videos! Never understood this one as an engineering student years ago!

Sometimes when I get tired, I Neal on de Grasse

Very entertaining, but K.F.Sundman's analytic solution (1912) not mentioned..?

Sounds like we need an improbability drive to navigate the chaos of star clusters! :)

This was great. Loved the way you two go through it together

I wish he did see "3 Body Problem" There are other scientific ideas explored such as: Fermi Paradox; Dark Forest; syzygy (tides vs gravity); quantum entanglement; higher dimensions. exploding nukes to propel a spaceship; Alpha Centauri (as restricted 3 body, though portrayed as 3 body)

It's a P vs NP problem. You can calculate it and even predict it if you can measure enough factors, especially over time, but all factors are not precise. In that lack of precision is where our perception of chaos originates and perpetuates. Knowing exact mass, trajectory, momentum, etc. of all bodies (and identifying all bodies) would allow measurement, calculation, and prediction, and could also lead to discovery of an unknown phenomena due to unexpected results and process of elimination.

My attitude is that it's a cycle with multiple points of mass that are in equilibrium with eachother.. And forces that are applied beyond only these 4.. That may be not considered, unknown but that certainly play part in this equilibrium But with that said I've not researched any net change that has occurred over time or that is occurring now..

One of the most common approaches to solving the three-body problem is numerical integration, where the equations of motion for the three bodies are solved numerically using techniques such as the Runge-Kutta method or adaptive step-size methods. While computationally intensive, this approach allows for accurate predictions over short to moderate time scales.

If i had these guys for my high school science class, I’d actually look forward to going to school every day. There would be something else besides just band and lunch to keep me interested 🤷🏽😃

Thank you Neil deGrasse Tyson for making us slightly smarter and helping me get out of a writers block. Now i have the main hurdle for my next generation characters: the 3 body problem.

Three Body on Prime Video is really good too. It's the Mandarin version with English captions, 30 episodes. 😎

I love your explanation of the three body problem, What I might add though is that the three body problem does have a general solution found by a Finnish mathematician named Sundman in the form of an infinite series, albeit, it only converges after 10^8000000 terms, so it is possible to solve, but not in a closed form nor in a useful way. Thanks for the video Dr. Tyson!

Guys,the new intro is lovely!

Chuck is such an entertaining sidekick for Dr. Tyson. Enjoy the talk very much.

With a chaotic system with exactly known starting conditions we can model it forward for a decent period of time - infinitely or until the system dies with perfect inputs. The problem is that our accuracy of measurement isn't all that good, especially for distant stars. Then you have a big star cluster and "Oh no! Inaccurate measurements!" And then the system diverges wildly from prediction because no measurement can be good enough IRL.

How come a million people watched this in a day. i follow this channel from years, it used to be round about 50k or 100k at max. Never thought people will get that curious about it. Amazing. A very good sign.

I think a simpler explanation is that when you stack too many rules, then you end up in a situation where it is too difficult to model with predictive precision because it requires parameters that continuously change, so you never get one single cohesive equation. I generalized the answer, because it applies to so many things in life beyond astronomy. But that's basically it. right?

will save this video for when i try to get out of a 3 body problem situation...if u know what i mean. 2 bodies is all my mind can handle, it's stable!

Interviewer dude had no idea, just nodded along 😂

That was the best three body problem explanation that I’ve ever heard!

i'm so happy the questions i have someone in the patreon always asks it

I think the 3-body problem is of a time nature, it seems to me like 3 objects can be stable together like a triangle in a perfect fixed configuration, where for stationary it's the triangle and for dynamic it's perfectly balanced masses and orbits or instability. btw I think a lot of this applies to many different things

Nice! Great presentation. Love the history accompaniment. Sounds like the system is smarter than the observers, and it knows exactly what to do without humans telling it or predicting it. A balance, and an aesthetic that brings order. Interesting. Love the higher intelligence. Gratitude

Neil has the best shirts...love this one. Looks good on him

Great seeing you in Vegas this weekend Dr. Neil!!

Read the book before the show came out. Obviously the book is so much more epic and connects with this episode of ST on another level! Great read!

7:37 Neil is also quite precise with his wording