Recently, I was captivated by the Netflix series 3 Body Problem.

While the show itself is great, I found myself more intrigued by the actual problem it references.

What’s fascinating is this: when two objects in space—say, stars or planets—interact, their movement is highly predictable with our current mathematical models. We can calculate their positions eons into the future with shocking precision. That’s why we know, for instance, when the moon will rise 1,000 years from now in Tibet.

But the moment you introduce a third object, all bets are off. We lose the ability to predict or model their movements.

Why is that interesting?

Because even though we can’t use math to solve the three-body problem, it’s still 100% knowable. These celestial bodies aren’t behaving randomly. They’re following clear, immutable laws of physics. There’s nothing chaotic about their behavior—but there is something chaotic about our ability to compute it.

The tiniest rounding error—down to .0000000000000000000001%—can throw everything off. So even extreme accuracy is useless here.

It’s a paradox: something entirely logical, yet effectively unknowable. Chaotic, but not in the way we usually mean.

The three-body problem is one of the clearest examples of something in our universe that’s just beyond reach—dangling right in front of our nose, taunting us.

Will quantum computing solve problems like this? Will this be the type of problem AI cracks open?

We’re still just primates, after all.