Real System Presets

Section 10 of the document maps three real astronomical triples into the model — masses, distances and periods included.

System	Bodies	Masses (kg)	Distances (m)	Periods (s)
Sun–Earth–Moon	Sun · Earth · Moon	1.989e30 · 5.972e24 · 7.342e22	1.496e11 (1 AU) · 3.844e8	3.156e7 (year) · 2.361e6 (month)
α Centauri	α Cen A · α Cen B · Proxima	1.078e30 · 0.907e30 · 2.446e29	2.345e11 · 1.3e13	2.234e8 · 3.154e9
Pluto–Charon–Nix	Pluto · Charon · Nix	1.303e22 · 1.586e21 · ~2e15	1.959e7 · 4.98e7	5.53e5 · 2.42e6

How the presets are used

Each preset is a RealSystem record — name, body list, masses, characteristic distances, characteristic periods. Menu mode 6 prints and analyses the presets: they serve as (i) parameter scales for the vortex simulation (which length, time and mass units the dimensionless model maps to) and (ii) the "reality anchor" for the narrative of the document. The vortex model does not claim to reproduce ephemerides; it uses the astronomical triples to fix dimensionless ratios and to keep the discussion of the three-body problem concrete.

Why these three? Sun–Earth–Moon is the canonical hierarchical triple everyone can picture; α Centauri is the closest real three-star system and a long-standing laboratory of three-body stability discussions (Proxima's orbit is measured in hundreds of thousands of years); Pluto–Charon–Nix is a genuinely dynamically rich small triple whose satellites' mutual perturbations are observable. Together they span six orders of magnitude in scale — a compact illustration of why the three-body problem admits no universal closed form.

A note on honesty

The presets enter the document as configuration data, not as simulation results. No claim in the repository depends on the accuracy of the third body's mass in the Pluto system (Nix's mass is known only to order-of-magnitude precision) — the presets are labelled with their source uncertainties in the code comments, and the verification ladder does not use them: V1–V4 operate on the exact model objects. This separation keeps the verified core clean of astronomical parameter noise.