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Pulcinella 7 hours ago

There actually is an analytical solution using a power series that actually converges (Karl Sundman's work). Unfortunately, the universe still mocks our attempts. Though the series converges, it does so incredibly slowly. From Wikipedia:

The corresponding series converges extremely slowly. That is, obtaining a value of meaningful precision requires so many terms that this solution is of little practical use. Indeed, in 1930, David Beloriszky calculated that if Sundman's series were to be used for astronomical observations, then the computations would involve at least 10^8000000 terms.

Nevermark 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> the computations would involve at least 10^8000000 terms.

Well we could speed up that simulation pretty easily, just arrange the actual masses and velocities somewhere...

Then I thought, is there a way to scale the distances, masses and velocities to create a system with the same, but proportionally faster behavior?

One guess as to perhaps why not: As distances get small, normal matter bodies will get close enough to actually collide. Perhaps some tiny primordial black holes would be useful.