The figure-8 orbit is _slightly_ stable, in the sense that small perturbations of the initial positions and momenta, or small changes in the masses away from them being identical, result in smooth oscillations, phase changes, or rotations rather than escape. The same seems to be true of the "criss-cross" orbit, which was discovered by Henon; see some numerical evidence of this in http://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0511219.pdf . Still, you would have to be incredibly lucky to be in the basin of attraction of either orbit. Cris On Mar 9, 2013, at 9:57 PM, Henry Baker wrote:
Are there any 3-body configurations that show anything like this type of stability, other than a hierarchy like Sun, Earth, Moon ?
Cristopher Moore Professor, Santa Fe Institute The Nature of Computation Cristopher Moore and Stephan Mertens Available now at all good bookstores, or through Oxford University Press http://www.nature-of-computation.org/