English

Explaining Neptune's Eccentricity

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 2021-06-18 v3

Abstract

Early migration damped Neptune's eccentricity. Here, we assume that the damped value was much smaller than the value observed today, and show that the closest flyby of 0.1  M\sim 0.1 \; \mathrm{M_{\odot}} star over 4.5  Gyr\sim 4.5 \mathrm{\; Gyr} in the field, at a distance of 103  AU\sim 10^3 \mathrm{\; AU} would explain the value of Neptune's eccentricity observed today.

Cite

@article{arxiv.2104.07672,
  title  = {Explaining Neptune's Eccentricity},
  author = {Amir Siraj and Abraham Loeb},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2104.07672},
  year   = {2021}
}

Comments

2 pages, 1 figure; accepted for publication in RNAAS

R2 v1 2026-06-24T01:12:54.606Z