Related papers: Is the Solar System Stable ?
Because of the high eccentricities (~0.3) of two of the possible planets about the star Upsilon Andromeda, the stability of the system requires careful study. We present results of 1000 numerical simulations which explore the orbital…
Our understanding of the processes that are relevant to the formation and maintenance of habitable planetary systems is advancing at a rapid pace, both from observation and theory. The present review focuses on recent research that bears on…
We present a stability analysis of a large set of simulated planetary systems of three or more planets based on architectures of multiplanet systems discovered by \textit{Kepler} and \textit{K2}. We propagated 21,400 simulated planetary…
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…
The dynamical structure of the Solar System can be explained by a period of orbital instability experienced by the giant planets. While a late instability was originally proposed to explain the Late Heavy Bombardment, recent work favors an…
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…
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,…
The solar system's dynamical state can be explained by an orbital instability among the giant planets. A recent model has proposed that the giant planet instability happened during terrestrial planet formation. This scenario has been shown…
The ejection of planets by the instability of planetary systems is a potential source of free-floating planets. We numerically simulate multi-planet systems to study the evolution process, the properties of surviving systems, and the…
A new era of directly imaged extrasolar planets has produced a three-planet system (Marois et al. 2008), where the masses of the planets have been estimated by untested cooling models. We point out that the nominal circular, face-on orbits…
The Sun has long been considered a constant star, to the extent that its total irradiance was termed the solar constant. It required radiometers in space to detect the small variations in solar irradiance on timescales of the solar rotation…
The discovery of the chaotic motion of the planets in the Solar System dates back more than 30 years. Still, no analytical theory has satisfactorily addressed the origin of chaos so far. Implementing canonical perturbation theory in the…
In this paper we propose a notion of stability, that we call $\epsilon -N$-stability, for systems of particles interacting via Newton's gravitational potential, and orbiting a much bigger object. For these systems the usual thermodynamical…
The Sun has been known to rotate for more than 4 centuries, and evidence is also available through direct measurements, that almost all stars rotate. In this lecture, I will propose a review of the different physical processes associated to…
The study of our Solar System -- its formation, evolution, and long-term stability -- has been ongoing for centuries and is now a standard part of scientific education. While the formation of other Solar-like exoplanetary systems is…
Compact planetary systems with more than two planets can undergo orbital crossings from planet-planet perturbations. The time which the system remains stable without orbital crossings has an exponential dependence on the initial orbital…
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…
Solar activity is a process driven by many independent but interconnected phenomena. Although the 11-year cycle is the result of operation of the dynamo mechanism, the cause of longer secular variations is not clear. In search of such a…
Planetary systems can evolve dynamically even after the planets themselves have fully formed, and there is circumstantial evidence that most planetary systems become unstable after the disappearance of the gaseous protoplanetary disk.…
For centuries, our knowledge of planetary systems and ideas about planet formation were based on a single example, our solar system. During the last thirteen years, the discovery of ~170 planetary systems has ushered in a new era for…