Related papers: Why is the Moon synchronously rotating?
When the Moon was formed it was much closer to the Earth than it is today. It just needed about 20 days then to go around the Earth. Now it takes the Moon 29.5 days to make one revolution. In order to follow the conservation of angular…
The process of capture in the coorbital region of a solar system planet is studied. Absolute capture likelihood in the 1:1 resonance is determined by randomly constructed statistical ensembles numbering $7.24\times 10^5$ of massless…
The majority of extrasolar planets discovered to date have significantly eccentric orbits, some if not all of which may have been produced through planetary migration. During this process, any planets interior to such an orbit would…
We have investigated the probability of temporary capture of asteroids in eccentric orbits by a planet in a circular or an eccentric orbit through analytical and numerical calculations. We found that in the limit of the circular orbit, the…
A migrating planet can capture planetesimals into mean motion resonances. However, resonant trapping can be prevented when the drift or migration rate is sufficiently high. Using a simple Hamiltonian system for first and second order…
We report in this paper the numerical simulations of the capture into the 3:1 mean-motion resonance between the planet b and c in the 55 Cancri system. The results show that this resonance can be obtained by a differential planetary…
The Moon is traditionally thought to have coalesced from the debris ejected by a giant impact onto the early Earth. However, such models struggle to explain the similar isotopic compositions of Earth and lunar rocks at the same time as the…
We examine the dynamics and stability of circumbinary particles orbiting around the Earth-Moon binary system. The moon formed close to the Earth (semi-major axis $a_{EM}\approx 3\, R_\oplus$) and expanded through tides to its current day…
Some quadruple star systems in the hierarchical 2+2 configuration exhibit orbit-orbit resonances between the two compact binaries. We show that the most important resonances occur at period ratios of 1:1, 3:2 and 2:1. We describe the…
We consider a classical hydrogen atom in a linearly polarized electric field of slow changing frequency. When the system passes through a resonance between the driving frequency and the Kepler frequency of the electron's motion, a capture…
Eccentricity or obliquity tides have been proposed as the missing energy source that may explain the anomalously large radius of some transiting ``hot Jupiters''. To maintain a non-zero and large obliquity, it was argued that the planets…
The paper addresses the possibility of a young Mars having had a massive moon, which synchronised the rotation of Mars, and gave Mars an initial asymmetric triaxiality to be later boosted by geological processes. It turns out that a moon of…
A high-angular momentum giant impact with the Earth can produce a Moon with a silicate isotopic composition nearly identical to that of Earth's mantle, consistent with observations of terrestrial and lunar rocks. However, such an event…
We generalize spin-rotation coupling to compound spin systems. In the case of muons bound to nuclei in a storage ring the decay process acquires a modulation. Typical frequencies for $Z/A\sim 1/2$ are $\sim 3\times 10^6$Hz, a factor 10…
Few solar system asteroids and comets are found in high eccentricity orbits ($e > 0.9$) but in the primordial planetesimal disks and in exoplanet systems around dying stars such objects are believed to be common. For 2006 HY51, the main…
Mass-spring model simulations are used to investigate past spin states of a viscoelastic Phobos and Deimos. From an initially tidally locked state, we find crossing of a spin-orbit resonance with Mars or a mean motion resonance with each…
The spin-rotation of a planet arises from the accretion of angular momentum during its formation, but the details of this process are still unclear. In the solar system, the equatorial rotation velocities and spin angular momentum of the…
Many Sun-like stars are observed to host close-in super-Earths (SEs) as part of a multi-planetary system. In such a system, the spin of the SE evolves due to spin-orbit resonances and tidal dissipation. In the absence of tides, the planet's…
The richness of dynamical behavior exhibited by the rotational states of various solar system objects has driven significant advances in the theoretical understanding of their evolutionary histories. An important factor that determines…
In the giant impact hypothesis for lunar origin, the Moon accreted from an equatorial circum-terrestrial disk; however the current lunar orbital inclination of 5 degrees requires a subsequent dynamical process that is still debated. In…