Comments on: Figure Eight Orbit

By: Ars Mathematica » Blog Archive » Baez Week 234

Ars Mathematica » Blog Archive » Baez Week 234 — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 06:02:57 +0000

[…] Week 234 of John Baez’ This Week in Mathematical Physics is up. Most of this week’s edition is about the relationship of mathematics and music, but he does touch on a topic we’ve discussed before: weird orbits in classical mechanics. Cris Moore and Michael Nauenberg have found many new and strange solutions to the n-body problem and have provided movies (animated GIFs). The most amazing one is 21 bodies all moving along the same figure eight orbit. […]

By: Ars Mathematica » Blog Archive » Figure Eight Revisited

Ars Mathematica » Blog Archive » Figure Eight Revisited — Fri, 15 Jul 2005 16:43:20 +0000

[…] Astronomers have discovered a planet that has three suns, something that was long thought to be impossible. (Astronomers argued that the orbits would be too unstable.) Can a planet in a figure eight orbit be far behind? […]

By: Robbie

Robbie — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 01:52:07 +0000

Is it stable enough that you could use one of the Lagrange points (e.g. L4 or L5) of the earth-moon orbit? That might be more within NASA's reach and would be of more use to me (I could see it).

By: michael

michael — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 23:45:45 +0000

ROTFLMAO

In my opinion, there has never been a more quintessential “Walt” statement in the history of the universe. Nineteen words that perfectly encapsulate your essense. I am stunned by their perfection. Speechless. But of course, I can still type.

By: Walt

Walt — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 20:51:57 +0000

Then the sole purpose of NASA should be to build one of these somewhere beyond the orbit of Pluto.

By: sigfpe

sigfpe — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 19:24:26 +0000

Unfortunately “numerical experiments done by Douglas Heggie suggest that the probability of an eight is somewhere between one per galaxy and one per universe.”