Related papers: The propeller and the frog
Both Uranus and Neptune are thought to have strong zonal winds with velocities of several hundred meters per second. These wind velocities, however, assume solid-body rotation periods based on Voyager 2 measurements of periodic variations…
Transiting circumbinary planets (CBPs) are conspicuously rare, and entirely absent around stellar binaries with periods $\leq 7$ days. Here, we exploit a secular resonance to stimulate the orbit of a CBP into strong, disruptive interactions…
Transient orbital resonances have recently been identified as potentially important to the inspiral of small bodies into large black holes. These resonances occur as the inspiral evolves through moments in which two fundamental orbital…
A typical young pulsar slows down at an imperceptible rate, its spin period increasing by less than 10 microseconds over the course of a year. However, the inertia of a pulsar is so extreme that to effect this tiny change in rotation rate,…
Recent observations suggest that a large fraction of Kepler super-Earth systems have external giant planet companions (cold Jupiters), which can shape the architecture of the inner planets, in particular their mutual inclinations. The…
The upcoming space missions, MESSENGER and BepiColombo with onboard instrumentation capable of measuring the rotational parameters stimulate the objective to reach an accurate theory of the rotational motion of Mercury. For obtaining the…
Orbital resonances are ubiquitous in the Solar system. They play a decisive role in the long term dynamics, and in some cases the physical evolution, of the planets and of their natural satellites, as well as the evolution of small bodies…
In recent years, technical and theoretical work to detect moons and rings around exoplanets has been attempted. The small mass/size ratios between moons and planets means this is very challenging, having only one exoplanetary system where…
The planetary perturbations on Mercury's orbit lead to long-period forced librations of Mercury's mantle. These librations have previously been studied for a planet with two layers: a mantle and a liquid core. Here, we calculate how the…
The recent discovery of a roughly simultaneous periodic variability in the light curves of the BL Lac object PG 1553+113 at several electromagnetic bands represents the first case of such odd behavior reported in the literature. Motivated…
We study a one-dimensional chain of identical atoms with two electronic orbitals and two electrons per atom, subject to an external oscillating pressure that periodically modulates the lattice spacing. This leads to time-dependent intra-…
Resonance capture is studied numerically in the three-body problem for arbitrary inclinations. Massless particles are set to drift from outside the 1:5 resonance with a Jupiter-mass planet thereby encountering the web of the planet's…
Multiple planets undergoing disk migration may be captured into a chain of mean-motion resonances with the innermost planet parked near the disk's inner edge. Subsequent dynamical evolution may disrupt these resonances, leading to the…
The characteristics of the resonant disturbing function for an asteroid perturbed by a planet in circular orbit are discussed. The location of the libration centers and their dependence with the orbital elements of the resonant orbit are…
An increasing number of blazars have been reported to show jet wobbling (i.e., non-regular rotations of the structural position angle of their innermost jets in the plane of the sky with amplitudes between 20 deg. and 50 deg., and time…
Relativistic binary pulsars, such as B1534+12 and B1913+16 are characterized by having close orbits with a binary separation of ~ 3 R_\sun. The progenitor of such a system is a neutron star, helium star binary. The helium star, with a…
We investigate whether one or many companions are orbiting the extremely intermittent pulsar PSR B1931+24. We constrained our analysis on previous observations of eight fundamental properties of PSR B1931+24. The most puzzling properties…
Pulsar timing observations have revealed companions to neutron stars that include other neutron stars, white dwarfs, main-sequence stars, and planets. We demonstrate that the correlated and apparently stochastic residual times of arrival…
The solar convection zone exhibits a strong level of differential rotation, whereby the rotation period of the polar regions is about 25-30% longer than the equatorial regions. The Coriolis force associated with these zonal flows…
Dense and narrow rings have been discovered recently around the small Centaur object Chariklo and the dwarf planet Haumea, while being suspected around the Centaur Chiron. They are the first rings observed in the Solar System elsewhere than…