Bureau Des longitudes, Paris? Know them?

[Guv]

Alain Chenciner of the Bureau Des Longitudes in Paris was involved in work on a cute
astronomy problem which I would like to know more about.

Does anybody here have a contact with the Bureau des Longitudes in Paris? I could probably
read an article written in French, but I could not interact with a French speaking person in a real
time conversation, or write an intelligible letter in French.

Alain worked with a mathematician from California on a system with 3 objects which chased
each other in a figure 8 orbit. It would be a wild idea for use in a science fiction story. Imagine
living in a 3-star solar system with the stars in this figure 8 orbit. Your planet might switch stars
every once in a while.

I got some data from a web site and no response from the California mathematician.

The article I found on the Internet described a theoretical system with objects weighing only a
gram. I would like to know if they worked out the details of a system with solar size objects.

If anybody could act as an intermediary for me, I would appreciate it.

[Active]

Did you try this email address ?
rmont@math.ucsc.edu


Are you can try their Postal address:

Alain Chenciner
IMCCE-Observatoire de Paris
77 Avenue Denfert-Rochereau
F-75014 Paris
France

Richard Montgomery
Department of Mathematics
University of California
Santa Cruz, CA 95064

The closest answer I can get from Internet is :

The orbit persists even when the three masses aren’t precisely the same, and it can survive a tiny disturbance without serious disruption.

"What stability means physically is that there is some chance that the [figure-eight orbit] might actually be seen in some stellar system," Montgomery says. The chance that such a three-body system exists somewhere in the universe, however, is very small. Numerical experiments suggest that the probability is somewhere between one per galaxy and one per universe.


Ref : Orbiting in a figure-eight loop, Science News, Week of Apr. 14, 2001; Vol. 159, No. 15 (http://www.sciencenews.org/20010414/mathtrek.asp)

[Juan Carlos Rey]

I could probably read an article written in French, but I could not interact with a French speaking person in a real time conversation

Did you ever think that he probably could speak English??? (Or at least, read and write it like I do)