[Dark RevenantX]

We won't be happier by looking into space for answers.  We will be happier by playing FreeSpace 2.

[Mars]

Explain to the idiot here... in idiot terms, why multi-body situations are so hard to predict. Couldn't scale experiments here on Earth be used to predict them? I recall that it's impossible to calculate anything over unless one of the objects can be thought of to have null mass.

[CP5670]

Well, they're not necessarily hard. The equations describing the problem don't have any simple closed form solution for more than two bodies, but they are still fairly easy to solve numerically unless you're looking at a big (50+) number of them. Also, systems with three or more bodies can exhibit various kinds of singular or chaotic behavior that is hard to predict from the initial data, such as collisions or a body breaking away from the rest of the system permanently.

Speaking of this, one professor I know has a cool simulation applet of this problem on his website, with numerous predefined setups to play around with. It's possible to make a custom setup as well, but I don't remember how.