Physicists Discover 13 New Solutions To Three-Body Problem 127
sciencehabit writes "It's the sort of abstract puzzle that keeps a scientist awake at night: Can you predict how three objects will orbit each other in a repeating pattern? In the 300 years since this 'three-body problem' was first recognized, just three families of solutions have been found. Now, two physicists have discovered 13 new families. It's quite a feat in mathematical physics, and it could conceivably help astrophysicists understand new planetary systems."
The paper is available at arxiv.
Re:having said that (Score:5, Insightful)
You misunderstand the laws of thermodynamics. They apply also at the quantum level, and deal mostly about the energy cost of transferring a bit of information. The trick being that the bit may or may not decay with some probability which depends on how much energy you put into preserving it. Where a "bit" is for example the excitation level of an electron.
The universe is truly nondeterministic. It really is a hugely complicated probability density function :)