Floating around at the edge of the Solar System are leftovers from its formation. This is the Kuiper Belt, which is composed of chunks of rock and ice like comets, dwarf planets, and random objects ...

Astronomers may have just identified a rare example of a "three-body problem" hiding in plain sight beyond the solar system's most distant planet. If the observation can be confirmed, it suggests that ...

When three massive objects meet in space, they influence each other through gravity in ways that evolve unpredictably. In a word: Chaos. That is the conventional understanding. Now, a researcher has ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. David Birch is a London-based advisor on digital financial services. Oct 11, 2024, 06:05am EDT Oct 17, 2024, 06:21am EDT LOS ...

The famously chaotic three-body problem, which describes how three masses gravitationally interact, has puzzled physicists for centuries. Now, new research suggests it's not quite as chaotic as ...

I’ve yet to meet a physicist that didn’t believe in the beauty of the general theory of relativity—Einstein’s description of gravity as the curvature of spacetime. After all, it’s consistently ...

The Kuiper Belt object Altjira was thought to be a binary, but closer analysis suggests that it is highly likely to be a triple system This raises the question of the three-body problem; if Altjira ...

New research suggests that a binary pair of Kuiper Belt objects, known as the Altjira system, is actually made up of three separate bodies orbiting one another in a complex triad. This rare orbital ...