Euler's three-body problem
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
In physics and astronomy, Euler's three-body problem is to solve the motion of a test mass that is free to move in the presence of the gravitational field of a primary and seconary mass which are fixed in space. This problem is the simplest three-body problem which retains physical significance, and is named for Leonhard Euler, who discussed it in memoirs published in 1760.
The problem is analytically soluble but requires the evaluation of elliptic integrals. Numerical methods may be used, such as Runge-Kutta, to solve the resulting ordinary differential equations approximately and to gain some feel for the physics.
