{"id":91946,"date":"2024-04-26T10:14:42","date_gmt":"2024-04-26T14:14:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsroom.carleton.ca\/?post_type=cu_story&p=91946"},"modified":"2025-08-19T09:37:02","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T13:37:02","slug":"3-body-problem-planetary-orbit","status":"publish","type":"cu_story","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/news\/story\/3-body-problem-planetary-orbit\/","title":{"rendered":"The Planetary Orbit in Netflix’s ‘3 Body Problem’ Is Random and Chaotic, but Could It Exist?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n The Planetary Orbit in Netflix's '3 Body Problem' Is Random and Chaotic, but Could It Exist?\n <\/h1>\n \n <\/header>\n <\/div>\n\n \n <\/path>\n <\/path>\n <\/svg>\n <\/div>\n\n \n\n <\/div>\n<\/section>\n\n

This article is republished<\/a> from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. All photos provided by The Conversation<\/a> from various sources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter Watson<\/a> is a emeritus professor of physics at Carleton University. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Note: The following article contains spoilers about the Netflix series “3 Body Problem.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I first encountered the three-body problem 60 years ago, in a short story called “Placet is a Crazy Place<\/a>” by American science fiction writer Frederic Brown<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Brown’s story, Placet is a planet in a figure-of-eight orbit around two stars, one of which is composed of ordinary matter, the other of anti-matter. The closeness of the two stars cause time and space to become wonderfully distorted so that Placet can eclipse itself. But, intriguingly, the orbit is assumed to be stable and predictable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chinese science fiction writer Liu Cixin’s epic trilogy, Rememberance of Earth’s Past<\/em>, returns to imagining what could happen when three celestial bodies are in orbit around each other. The first instalment, The Three-Body Problem<\/em>, has been adapted into a series by Netflix.<\/p>\n\n\n\n