There's a (relatively) famous problem in astrodynamics called "Apples in a Spacecraft". I wrote a blog post about it a little while back [1], but the gist of t

There's a (relatively) famous problem in astrodynamics called "Apples in a Spacecraft". I wrote a blog post about it a little while back [1], but the gist of the problem is this: Suppose you're in a rectangular spacecraft orbiting around the Earth and you release a bushel of apples so that they are uniformly distributed and stationary relative to your spacecraft. If you don't disturb the apples, what will their long-term distribution look like? There was a bit of a debate in the literature as to the answer to this problem and the physicist Alfvén (better known for Alfvén waves [2]) ended up getting the wrong answer. The correct answer (due to Hénon, who is better known for the Hénon map [3]). Hénon showed that half the apples would end up at the top back corner, and the other half would end up at the bottom front corner of the spacecraft. The reason for this is that the apples at the top of the spacecraft are in a slightly larger orbit and therefore have a slower velocity than the center of mass of the spacecraft. This causes them to drift to the back of the spacecraft. Similarly, the apples that start on the bottom of the spacecraft have a higher velocity and start to drift towards the front of the spacecraft. [1]: https://joe-antognini.github.io/astronomy/apples-in-a-spacecraft https://joe-antognini.github.io/astronomy/apples-in-a-spacec... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfv%C3%A9n_wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfv%C3%A9n_wave [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A9non_map https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A9non_map