But Newton was stumped when he introduced a third planet. Trying to calculate the behaviour of a solar system consisting, say, of the Sun, the Earth and the Moon seemed simple enough, but already you are facing an equation in 18 variables: 9 for position and 9 for the speed of each planet. Newton conceded that ‘to consider simultaneously all these causes of motion and to define these motions by exact laws admitting of easy calculation exceeds, if I am not mistaken, the force of any human mind’.
Three body problem
