Thanks to the rabbit I pulled out of my hat on my returning from the museum the other evening, I’ve been able to get back on track. But today I’m filled with a strange mixture of optimism and dread. . . . the complexity of the mathematical landscape that’s now opened up makes my head spin if I think about it for more than a few moments.
Can one predict the future arrangements of planets over
extremely large time periods? For centuries this issue has
triggered dreams of curious people, and hot debates by specialists
including Newton, Lagrange, Poincare, Kolmogorov, Laskar,
and...
