The classic three-body problem, which is to understand the motions of three objects interacting under their own gravity, is notoriously complicated. The gravitational potential leads to chaotic trajectories, and requires sophisticated methods to simulate well. Even simplifying by restricting motion to a plane, and only considering scattering collisions still leaves a chaotic problem. While the gravitational planar three-body scattering problem is well studied, less work has been done on molecular scattering potentials, whose attractive term is similar to that of gravity. To investigate the classical, as well as molecular, three-body planar scattering problem, we developed code to integrate and categorize collisions based on their outcome. In doing so we found new structure in the phase space of collisions, especially around proposed triple collisions. Further, we found that two-body head-on collisions, which are not integrable with traditional integration techniques, have no effect on the structure of phase space, but divide phase space as the potential varies away from that of gravity. This work may be used to connect the three body problem with molecular collisions, and to better understand celestial collisions.
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