Is the outer Solar System chaotic?
Astrophysics
2015-06-24 v1
Abstract
The existence of chaos in the system of Jovian planets has been in question for the past 15 years. Various investigators have found Lyapunov times ranging from about 5 millions years upwards to infinity, with no clear reason for the discrepancy. In this paper, we resolve the issue. The position of the outer planets is known to only a few parts in 10 million. We show that, within that observational uncertainty, there exist Lyapunov timescales in the full range listed above. Thus, the ``true'' Lyapunov timescale of the outer Solar System cannot be resolved using current observations.
Cite
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0702179,
title = {Is the outer Solar System chaotic?},
author = {Wayne B. Hayes},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0702179},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
8 pages, 2 figures