Related papers: Finding Planet Nine: apsidal anti-alignment Monte …
In the past decade, numerical simulations started to reveal the possible existence of planet 9 in our solar system. The planet 9 scenario can provide an excellent explanation to the clustering in orbital elements for Kuiper Belt objects.…
A relatively massive and moderately eccentric disk of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) can effectively counteract apse precession induced by the outer planets, and in the process shepherd highly eccentric members of its population into…
Nine extrasolar planets with masses between 110 and 430M are known to transit their star. The knowledge of their masses and radii allows an estimate of their composition, but uncertainties on equations of state, opacities and possible…
An unusual orbital element clustering of Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) has been observed. The most promising dynamic solution is the presence of a giant planet in the outer Solar system, Planet Nine. However, due to its extreme distance,…
Among the outer solar system minor planet orbits there is an observed gap in perihelion between roughly 50 and 65 au at eccentricities $e\gtrsim0.65$. Through a suite of observational simulations, we show that the gap arises from two…
The orbits of trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) can indicate the existence of an undiscovered planet in the outer solar system. Here, we used N-body computer simulations to investigate the effects of a hypothetical Kuiper Belt planet (KBP) on…
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…
Disks of low-mass bodies on high-eccentricity orbits in near-Keplerian potentials can be dynamically unstable to buckling out of the plane. In this letter, we present $N$-body simulations of the long-term behavior of such a system, finding…
It has been proposed that mean motion resonances (MMRs) between Planet Nine and distant objects of the scattered disk might inform the semimajor axis and instantaneous position of Planet Nine. Within the context of this hypothesis, the…
The Kuiper belt objects (KBOs) exhibit an orbital clustering of the outer planets lying at perihelion distances larger than Neptune and semimajor axes greater than 150 AU from the Sun. This implies a hitherto unknown dynamical mechanism to…
Asteroids that follow similar orbits may have a dynamical connection as their current paths could be the result of a past interaction with a massive perturber. The pair of extreme trans-Neptunian objects or ETNOs (474640) 2004 VN112-2013…
Today, Pluto and Eris are the largest and most massive Trans-Neptunian Objects respectively. They are believed to be the last remnants of a population of planetesimals that has been reduced by >99% since the time of its formation. This…
To explain the unusual distribution of Kuiper Belt objects, several authors have advocated the existence of a super-Earth planet in the outer solar system. It has recently been proposed that a 10 M$_{\oplus}$ object with an orbit of 700 AU…
Planets in extrasolar systems tend to interact such that their orbits lie near a boundary between apsidal libration and circulation, a "separatrix", with one eccentricity periodically reaching near-zero. One explanation, applied to the…
Nearly all known extreme trans-Neptunian objects (ETNOs) have argument of perihelion close to 0 degrees. An existing observational bias strongly favours the detection of ETNOs with arguments of perihelion close to 0 degrees and 180 degrees…
The final orbital configuration of a planetary system is shaped by both its early star-disk environment and late-stage gravitational interactions. Assessing the relative importance of each of these factors is not straightforward due to the…
Evidence suggests the existence of a large planet in the outer Solar System, Planet Nine, with a predicted mass of 6.6 +2.6 / -1.7 Earth masses (Brown et al., 2024). Based on mass radius composition models, planet formation theory, and…
Concordant evidence points towards the existence of a ninth planet in the Solar System at more than $400\,$AU from the Sun. In particular, trans-Neptunian object orbits are perturbed by the presence of a putative gravitational source. Since…
Most known trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) gravitationally scattering off the giant planets have orbital inclinations consistent with an origin from the classical Kuiper belt, but a small fraction of these "scattering TNOs" have inclinations…
Doppler spectroscopy has detected 136 planets around nearby stars. A major puzzle is why their orbits are highly eccentric, while all planets in our Solar System are on nearly circular orbits, as expected if they formed by accretion…