We investigate statistics of the decay process in the equal-mass three-body problem with randomized initial conditions .
Contrary to earlier expectations of similarity with “ radioactive decay ” , the lifetime distributions obtained in our numerical experiments turn out to be heavy-tailed , i.e .
the tails are not exponential , but algebraic .
The computed power-law index for the differential distribution is within the narrow range , approximately from -1.7 to -1.4 , depending on the virial coefficient .
Possible applications of our results to studies of the dynamics of triple stars known to be at the edge of disruption are considered .