There is a bright side to this story. If governments could have solved shell trajectories in closed form, there wouldn't have been as much impetus for developing the computer (computing shell trajectories and astrological predictions seem to have been the primary computational tasks down through the centuries). At 06:05 AM 6/1/2012, James Aaronson wrote:

If anyone's German is up to scratch, then you may be able to make some sense of his poster, which is available (though only partially visible) here: http://img838.imageshack.us/img838/8750/mshouryyaray.jpg

The highest ranking answer on the physics.stackexchange discussion ( http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/28931/what-are-the-precise-statem... ) seems to have analysed the poster. Essentially, Ray works out series expansions for u and v, and then somehow works out the conserved quantity Adam provided.

Apparently, the book referenced in this post ( http://www.reddit.com/r/math/comments/u74no/supposedly_this_is_a_new_formula... ) (the book is in French) discusses the formula as well.

On Thu, May 31, 2012 at 9:01 PM, Adam P. Goucher <apgoucher@gmx.com> wrote:

...

An Indian teenager in Dresden supposedly came up with a new closed

...

form solution to a trajectory in the presence of air resistance.

Apparently, it assumes quadratic drag. There's a derivation here:

http://www.reddit.com/r/**worldnews/comments/u7551/teen_** solves_newtons_300yearold_**riddle_an/c4t03fl<http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/u7551/teen_solves_newtons_300yearold_riddle_an/c4t03fl>

Sincerely,

Adam P. Goucher

-- James