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I was wondering about this too, but I think they're not colliding. I think they're pulling towards each other and getting tightly pulled around each other so they end up slingshotting and flying back the way they came, in a way that looks like a bounce.

You can see this in the very beginning of the simulation, with the blue and green dot.

Can anyone say if this is actually accurate? It seems like an unintuitive motion to me, but I'm often surprised by how these things work.




i believe you're correct, other (higher resolution) visualizations of periodic orbits show that "wrapping" behavior more clearly.

example from wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-body_problem#/media/File...




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