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Sarah Millholland, MIT physics professor and Kavli Institute member, is the 2024 Vera Rubin Early Career Award recipient for her wide-ranging contributions to the formation and dynamics of extrasolar planetary systems.
If a super-advanced civilization had to ability to engineer the solar system from scratch, how many planets could they squeeze around the sun?
If a super-advanced civilization had to ability to engineer the solar system from scratch, how many planets could they squeeze around the sun?
Reset A fresh, abstract approach to solving the statistical model for the famous “three-body problem”. This promising idea tackles chaos between co-orbiting bodies by treating space as an eight-dimensional region. Order out of chaos Isaac Newton’s three laws of motion can elegantly describe the basic physics of how things interact in the universe. These equations can be used to describe how Earth orbits the sun or how the moon orbits the Earth. However, when Newton tried to introduce a third object to a pair of orbiting objects — such as a relationship between Earth, moon, and the ...
The three-body problem refers to astronomers' inability to track the collision course of three stars hurtling toward one another through space. To better predict the fates of these celestial bodies, the secret is to treat space like a leaky balloon made of Swiss cheese. Picture Earth and the moon careening together around the solar system. It's clear what will happen as the moon continues to circle our planet, completing its full orbit each month. Now picture—as in the 2011 film Melancholia—a rogue planet barreling toward Earth. ➡ With this third celestial body in the mix, all bets a...