Something peculiar in my 2yo's bedroom led me to a revelation about our universe

Post by mproud » Sun, Jan 28, 2024, 7:04 AM UTC

spiderxxxx wrote: post #48

Might as well add 2060 Chiron to the list...

Post by joaogui1 » Mon, Jan 29, 2024, 3:16 PM UTC

dreamcompiler wrote: post #50

joaogui1 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the definition of chaos here? I thought chaos implied the measurement error growing quickly during propagation, but here it looks like it's growing pretty slowly. In what way is this more chaotic than the movement of a single accelerating body (where the error grows linearly with time)?

Chaos requires nonlinearity. A gravitational body's motion affects every other body, which in turn affects the original body, etc. So you can't analyze the parts of the system independently and then just add up the results. A body's motion indirectly affects its own future motion. Spacetime tells matter how to move and matter tells spacetime how to bend, as Wheeler said. In two-body problems, this infinite recursion…