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Just out of curiosity, I have a question about the current status of classical (Newtonian) three-body gravitional numerical simulation. I found wikipedia is relatively limited on this topic.

Given three stellas, how accurate can we predict their trajectories using numerical methods based on current compuational techniques and computer capacity? Is there any comparison with astrophysics observation? (Presumably we can update our observed initial conditions during calculation)

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  • $\begingroup$ have you seen this physics.stackexchange.com/questions/83633/… $\endgroup$ – DarioP Jan 23 '14 at 8:46
  • $\begingroup$ Yes I have and I edited my post. However, seems that post was related to a special class of solutions and the comments do not indicate how accurate the numerical simulations are (maybe I just overlook at the replies) $\endgroup$ – user26143 Jan 23 '14 at 8:51
  • $\begingroup$ I would see a general question out the error analysis of numeric intgrators as a numeric detail and therefore off-topic here. Use Computational Science for questions of this sort. If the question is, instead, about the achieved reliability of a particular analysis or group of analyses, that is probably on-topic, but we would need more detail. The short-short version is that classical gravitation simulations have been extensively worked on for decades and they are very good, indeed. $\endgroup$ – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten Jan 23 '14 at 20:39
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    $\begingroup$ The question is about achieved reliability. What kind of details do I need to provide? I also expect the result is very good. What I would like to have, is a reference includes a comparison with astrophysics or any other experiment and computed results. $\endgroup$ – user26143 Jan 24 '14 at 0:17
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    $\begingroup$ I am wandering (maybe) more chaotic system, like three stellas having similar mass, otherwise sun, moon, and earth are also three body. Anyway, thanks a lot for this example... $\endgroup$ – user26143 Jan 26 '14 at 8:36

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