AdvertisementThe three-body problem is unsolvable and chaoticSome of the show's action takes place in a virtual world that's orbited by three suns. "This is a centuries-old problem," Shane Ross, an aerospace and ocean engineering professor at Virginia Tech, told Business Insider. Alpha Centauri is the closest star system to EarthThe three-body system in the story is based on a real neighboring star system called Alpha Centauri. At about 4 light-years from Earth, it's the closest star system to our own and contains three stars: Alpha Centauri A, Alpha Centauri B, and Proxima Centauri, which has two planets orbiting around it. A view of the bright triple-star system Alpha Centauri.

---

Persons: —, Liu Cixin, Shane Ross, Isaac Newton, Ross, Georgios Kollidas, Alpha Centauri, Franck Marchis, Davide De Martin, they're, Marchis, Ye Wenjie, Enrico Fermi, Benedict Wong, Jerry Ehman, Sir William Hamilton, William of Ockham, Aristotle, Ptolemy, Maximilien Brice, John Finney, It's Organizations: Service, Netflix, Oxford University, Business, Virginia Tech, Alpha, Alpha Centauri, Proxima, SETI Institute, ESO, Columbia University, USA, Keystone, Getty, Ohio State University, Extraterrestrial Intelligence, SETI, American AstroPhysical, CERN Locations: Ohio, China, North America