Related papers: Chaotic diffusion in the Solar System
Due to the chaotic nature of the Solar System, the question of its long-term stability can only be answered in a statistical sense, for instance, based on numerical ensemble integrations of nearby orbits. Destabilization of the inner…
Due to the chaotic nature of the Solar System, the question of its dynamic long-term stability can only be answered in a statistical sense, e.g. based on numerical ensemble integrations of nearby orbits. Destabilization, including…
We study the chaotic orbital evolution of planetary systems, focusing on secular (i.e., orbit-averaged) interactions, because these often dominate on long timescales. We first focus on the evolution of a test particle that is forced by…
A long-term numerical integration of the classical Newtonian approximation to the planetary orbital motions of the full Solar System (sun + 8 planets), spanning 20 Gyr, was performed. The results showed no severe instability arising over…
Mercury's eccentricity is chaotic and can increase so much that collisions with Venus or the Sun become possible (Laskar, 1989, 1990, 1994, 2008, Batygin & Laughlin, 2008, Laskar & Gastineau, 2009). This chaotic behavior results from an…
The long-term variations in the orbit of the Earth govern the insolation on its surface and hence its climate. The use of the astronomical signal, whose imprint has been recovered in the geological records, has revolutionized the…
The long-term stability of the Solar System is an issue of significant scientific and philosophical interest. The mechanism leading to instability is Mercury's eccentricity being pumped up so high that Mercury either collides with Venus or…
Mercury's orbit can destabilize, generally resulting in a collision with either Venus or the Sun. Chaotic evolution can cause g1 to decrease to the approximately constant value of g5 and create a resonance. Previous work has approximated…
The long-term evolution of the solar system is chaotic. In some cases, chaotic diffusion caused by an overlap of secular resonances can increase the eccentricity of planets when they enter into a linear secular resonance, driving the system…
Instabilities and strong dynamical interactions between multiple giant planets have been proposed as a possible explanation for the surprising orbital properties of extrasolar planetary systems. In particular, dynamical instabilities seem…
The orbit eccentricities of the Solar System planets are unusually low compared to the average of known exoplanetary systems. A power law correlation has previously been found between the multiplicity of a planetary system and the orbital…
Recent analyses of Kepler space telescope data reveal that transiting planets with orbital periods shorter than about 2-3 days are generally observed around late-type stars with rotation periods longer than about 5-10 days. We investigate…
Apart from being chaotic, the inner planets in the Solar System constitute an open system, as they are forced by the regular long-term motion of the outer ones. No integrals of motion can bound a priori the stochastic wanderings in their…
Most direct N-body integrations of planetary systems use a symplectic integrator with a fixed timestep. A large timestep is desirable in order to speed up the numerical simulations. However, simulations yield unphysical results if the…
Although the discovery of the chaotic motion of the inner planets in the solar system dates back to more than thirty years ago, the secular chaos of their orbits still dares more analytical analyses. Apart from the high-dimensional…
In the inner solar system, the planets' orbits evolve chaotically, driven primarily by secular chaos. Mercury has a particularly chaotic orbit, and is in danger of being lost within a few billion years. Just as secular chaos is reorganizing…
On timescales that greatly exceed an orbital period, typical planetary orbits evolve in a stochastic yet stable fashion. On even longer timescales, however, planetary orbits can spontaneously transition from bounded to unbound chaotic…
This paper studies the effects of dynamical interactions among the planets in observed extrasolar planetary systems, including hypothetical additional bodies, with a focus on secular perturbations. These interactions cause the…
The known population of exoplanets exhibits a much wider range of orbital eccentricities than Solar System planets and has a much higher average eccentricity. These facts have been widely interpreted to indicate that the Solar System is an…
With the availability of considerably more data, we revisit the question of how special our Solar System is, compared to observed exoplanetary systems. To this goal, we employ a mathematical transformation that allows for a meaningful,…