In physics, specifically classical mechanics, the three-body problem is to take the initial positions and velocities (or momenta) of three point masses orbiting each other in space and then to calculate their subsequent trajectories using Newton's laws of motion and Newton's law of universal gravitation.
Unlike the two-body problem, the three-body problem has no general closed-form solution, meaning there is no explicit formula for the positions of the bodies. When three bodies orbit each other, the resulting dynamical system is chaotic for most initial conditions, and the only way to predict the motions of the bodies is to estimate them using numerical methods.
