The planetary orbit in Netflix’s ‘3 Body Problem’ is random and chaotic, but could it exist?

By Peter Watson, Carleton University

Note: The following article contains spoilers about the Netflix series “3 Body Problem.”

I first encountered the three-body problem 60 years ago, in a short story called “Placet is a Crazy Place” by American science fiction writer Frederic Brown.

In Brown’s story, Placet is a planet in a figure-of-eight orbit around two stars, one of which is composed of ordinary matter, the other of anti-matter. The closeness of the two stars cause time and space to become wonderfully distorted so that Placet can eclipse itself. But, intriguingly, the orbit is assumed to be stable and predictable.

Chinese science fiction writer Liu Cixin’s epic trilogy, Rememberance of Earth’s Past, returns to imagining what could happen when three celestial bodies are in orbit around each other. The first instalment, The Three-Body Problem, has been adapted into a series by Netflix.

https://youtu.be/mogSbMD6EcY?si=2gvro8RnD1_pA6cd

The opening scenes of 3 Body Problem, set in Beijing in the early days of the Cultural Revolution, are particularly powerful. The characters in the series are flawed — the scientists are highly intelligent, but their ambitions, failings and fears are all too clear.

Random motion

The plot of 3 Body Problem involves an alien race, known as the Trisolarians, inhabiting a planet orbiting a nearby star system, known as Alpha Centauri. This consists of three stars that follow continuously changing orbits, causing the planet to go from bitter cold to searing heat in a matter of minutes.

The motion of the stars is unpredictable, so the Trisolarians cannot anticipate the arrival of the so-called chaotic eras that lead to the planet-wide destruction of their environment.

Intriguingly, Alpha Centauri actually is a triple-star system, consisting of two stars that orbit each other closely over a period of nearly 80 years, and a much more distant third star. This is very different from the system represented in 3 Body Problem.

So could we imagine a system where the stars are so close together in their orbits that their motion becomes random?

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