![ARE WE IN A CHAOTIC UNIVERSE?](https://cdn.magzter.com/1493279487/1652947335/articles/rgDKmBPXh1654253600229/ARE-WE-IN-A-CHAOTIC-UNIVERSE.jpg)
When it comes to surviving in space, the tiniest things can be the difference between life and death. As Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield said: "An astronaut who doesn't sweat the small stuff is a dead astronaut." That may be the case for human space travel, but astronomers are increasingly suspecting that the same mantra also applies to the wider universe. When it comes to the cosmos, it seems chaos theory is king.
Chaos theory traces its origins back to the 19th century. French polymath Henri Poincaré was attempting to win a prize of 2,500 crowns - a third of a professor's yearly salary - offered up by King Oscar II of Sweden and Norway to celebrate his 60th birthday. To win you had to predict the orbits of the planets. Isaac Newton's work on gravity allows you to foretell the future positions of two gravitationally intertwined objects with clockwork precision. Yet throw a third object into the mix and that ability vanishes. Poincaré failed to solve this 'three-body problem, but was awarded the prize nonetheless for important insights into why it's such a thorny conundrum to crack.
Russian mathematician Sofya Kovalevskaya also carried out important work on the problem. The puzzle is difficult because even the smallest changes in a system with many moving parts can lead to huge differences later down the line. That, in a nutshell, is the essence of chaos theory. "We wouldn't have chaos theory if we didn't study planetary orbits," says Dr Paul Sutter of the Flatiron Institute in New York.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة Issue 130 من All About Space.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
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هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة Issue 130 من All About Space.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
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LONG AGO, A LAKE ON MARS MAY HAVE BEEN SPRAWLING WITH MICROBES
Curiosity discovered manganese oxide in bedrock in a Martian region that may have been a shoreline billions of years ago
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MOON TOUR HELL
Finding this fascinating crater isnt as hard as its name suggests...
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THIS MONTH'S PLANETS
Most of the planets are tricky targets this month, but our guide will help you locate them
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UNIVERSE BEFORE TIME
Could the existence of a mirror-image cosmos before the Big Bang solve some of the biggest mysteries in astronomy?
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CLIMATE CHANGE IN THE SOLAR SYSTEM
Alongside Earth, our planetary neighbourhood is changing, but it’s not for the better…
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Stars give tiny planets a gravitational 'squeeze' to strip away their atmospheres
A scientist has learned more about the violent processes that rip atmospheres away from planets, finding that squashing and squeezing by a parent star can contribute to this process.
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The Milky Way's halo is filled with ‘magnetic doughnuts' as wide as 100,000 light years
The outer halo of the Milky Way is filled with magnetic fields that take the shape of vast doughnuts with diameters ranging from 12,000 to 100,000 light years, with the heart of our galaxy at their centre.
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The Pentagon wants the commercial space reserve to support military satellites in orbit
The US Department of Defense is developing a plan to use the ever-growing American commercial space industry for national security purposes.
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DOES A COSMIC 'GLITCH' IN GRAVITY CHALLENGE ALBERT EINSTEIN'S GREATEST THEORY?
Gravity changes once you reach a cosmic scale
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DEEP SKY CHALLENGE : STELLAR TREASURES OF THE ARCHER AND SCORPION
Summer skies are stuffed full of amazing objects for your telescope - if you're prepared to stay up late