An interesting solution to the Three Body Problem

Below is a Java applet to simulate three equal masses moving according to Newton's inverse-squrare gravitational force. The particular solution shown here is due to Alain Chenciener and Richard Montgomery, and their paper can be found at Richard Montgomery's Website.

The initial conditions are given as follows:
initial conditions: (x1,y1) = (-0.97000436, 0.24308753), (x2,y2) = (-x1, -y1), (x3,y3) = (0,0)
initial velocites (vx1,vy1) = (vx2, vy2) = -(vx3, vy3)/2; where (vx3,vy3) = (0.93240737, 0.86473146)

The masses are all 1, and the units are taken with Newton's gravitational constant as 1.

Kevin Iga / kiga@pepvax.pepperdine.edu/ kiga@pepperdine.edu