A rocket launch. Our nearest stellar neighbor. A Netflix show. All of these things have something in common: They must contend with the "three-body problem." But exactly what is this thorny physics conundrum?
The three-body problem describes a system containing three bodies that exert gravitational forces on one another. While it may sound simple, it's a notoriously tricky problem and "the first real worry of Newton," Billy Quarles, a planetary dynamicist at Valdosta State University in Georgia, told Live Science.
