Physics of the Tri-Solar Syzygy from The 3 Body Problem. Could People Really Be Pulled Off a Planet?
If it’s in the trailer, it’s not a spoiler. I’m talking about the scene from The 3 Body Problem in which the inhabitants of Trisolaris get pulled off the surface.
Here are minimal details that you need to know, and not any more (you can read the book or watch the Netflix show). There’s a planet called Trisolaris that in a system with three suns (that’s why it’s called the 3 Body Problem). At one point, people (they aren’t actually people) get pulled up off the surface of the planet. Here’s the quote from the book.
“Sire, the three suns are over our planet in a straight line, so their gravitational forces are added together…”
It actually doesn’t matter if this part of the plot is realistic or not — it’s just a story, and sometimes stories don’t obey the laws of physics. That’s what makes them so much fun. However, I’m still going to look at the physics of this Tri-Solar Syzygy (even though I don’t really know what a syzygy is, and at this point I’m afraid to ask).
The 3 Body Problem
If you have two objects involved in a gravitational interaction (like two stars in a binary star system), it’s possible to analytically solve for the equation of motion. You can get an…
