Chaos in the three-body problem
Sensibilidad a condiciones iniciales en el problema de tres cuerpos
- Date
- 1890 · confidence high
- Place
- Paris, France
- Credited to
- Henri Poincaré (memoir for King Oscar II's prize)
- People
- 👤 Henri Poincaré1854–1912
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What was discovered
While studying the stability of the solar system he discovered homoclinic orbits and that small initial differences produce entirely different behaviours. The first appearance of deterministic chaos and the origin of the qualitative theory of differential equations.
The memoir awarded the prize in 1889 contained an error; correcting it revealed the chaos.
What it led to
- dynamical systems
- chaos theory (Lorenz)
- KAM theory
- ergodic theory
Built on
- Newtonian and Laplacian celestial mechanics