Related papers: The propeller and the frog
Many barred galaxies exhibit upturns (shoulders) in their bar major-axis density profile. Simulation studies have suggested that shoulders are supported by looped $x_1$ orbits, occur in growing bars, and can appear after bar-buckling. We…
Blazars are a subclass of radio-loud active galactic nuclei (AGNs), where the jet is aligned close to the line of sight. Blazars emission is dominated by non-thermal processes, where Doppler boosted radiation originates from a relativistic…
The gravitational pull of a large number of asteroids perturbs a pulsar's motion to a degree that is detectable through precision timing of millisecond pulsars. The result is a low-frequency, correlated noise process, similar in form to the…
Planetary rings sustain a continual bombardment of hypervelocity meteoroids that erode the surfaces of ring particles on time scales of 10^5 - 10^7 years. The debris ejected from such impacts re-accretes on to the ring, though often at a…
Named for orbital kinship with Pluto, the Plutinos are a prominent group of Kuiper Belt objects whose orbital periods are in libration about the 3/2 ratio with Neptune's. We investigate the long term orbital dynamics of known Plutinos, with…
Rotobreathers in the chain of coupled linearly elastic rotators are analyzed. Each rotator is a particle connected by a massless elastic rod with a frictionless pivot; it has two degrees of freedom, length and angle of rotation. The rods of…
The four longest period Kuiper belt objects have orbital periods close to integer ratios with each other. A hypothetical planet with orbital period $\sim$17,117 years, semimajor axis $\sim$665 AU, would have N/1 and N/2 period ratios with…
We propose that neutral, circumpulsar debris entering the light cylinder can account for many time-dependent pulsar phenomena that are otherwise difficult to explain. Neutral material avoids propeller ejection and injects sufficient charges…
The inner parts of many spiral galaxies are dominated by bars. These are strong non-axisymmetric features which significantly affect orbits of stars and dark matter particles. One of the main effects is the dynamical resonances between…
Coorbital bodies are observed around the Sun sharing their orbits with the planets, but also in some pairs of satellites around Saturn. The existence of coorbital planets around other stars has also been proposed. For close-in planets and…
The shapes of fluid planets bear the signatures of rotational flattening and atmospheric flows. Precise knowledge of their shapes and wind profiles may therefore reveal their interior rotation rates. We re-examine this idea for the ice…
Following the general numerical analysis of Melita and Woolfson (1996), I showed in a recent paper that a restricted, planar, circular planetary system consisting of Sun, Jupiter and Saturn would be captured in a near (2:1) resonance when…
Planetary systems with mean-motion resonances (MMRs) hold special value in terms of their dynamical complexity and their capacity to constrain planet formation and migration histories. The key towards making these connections, however, is…
We propose a model for rotating current patterns within radiopulsar polar cap accelerators which has observational consequences that mimic those which have been attributed to neutron star free precession. The model is a simple extension of…
Planetary rings are not only ubiquitous around the giant planets in the outer Solar System, but have also been discovered around several small distant bodies. In contrast, no rings have been observed around any inner Solar System objects.…
Asteroids orbiting into the highly magnetized and highly relativistic wind of a pulsar offer a favourable configuration for repeating fast radio bursts (FRB). The body in direct contact with the wind develops a trail formed of a stationary…
We show that the periodic FRB 180916.J0158+65 can be interpreted by invoking an interacting neutron star binary system with an orbital period of $\sim 16$ days. The FRBs are produced by a highly magnetized pulsar, whose magnetic field is…
Observation of fast radio bursts (FRBs) are rising very quickly with the advent of specialised instruments and surveys, and it has recently been shown that some of them repeat quasi-periodically. In particular, evidence of a $P=16.35$ day…
Most close-in planetary satellites are in synchronous rotation, which is usually the stable end-point of tidal despinning. Saturn's moon Hyperion is a notable exception by having a chaotic rotation. Hyperion's dynamical state is a…
The origin of the highly eccentric, inclined, and resonance-locked orbit of Pluto has long been a puzzle. A possible explanation has been proposed recently [Malhotra, R., {\it Nature} 365:819-21 (1993)] which suggests that these…