Mad Destroyer

The story is about a mathematician/astronomer who has discovered an exact solution to the multi-body problem in gravitation i.e. a formula which can easily calculate the positions and velocities of N bodies moving under mutual gravitation, for all N >= 2. Based on this formulation, he solves for the position of the asteroid, Eros, moving under the influence of Sun, Earth and Venus and predicts that it will crash into the sun in 3 years with enough force that a small outer layer of the Sun will get blown off, destroying all life on Earth. Some melodrama follows and people now wait for the predicted date for denouement.

There is a very good description of the 3-body problem in layman’s terms and the scientist acknowledges Karl Sundman’s 3-body solution as well (“Sundman of Helsingfors”), with the note that Sundman’s solution is not very user-friendly for calculations in the (computer-less) real world. The author does make a mistake when his scientist claims that a collision between Eros and Earth can cause only a few thousand people to die in the immediate vicinity of the collision but in general, a very nicely written story.