Related papers: Mercury's chaotic secular evolution as a subdiffus…
Mercury's eccentricity is chaotic and can increase so much that collisions with Venus or the Sun become possible (Laskar, 1989, 1990, 1994, 2008, Batygin & Laughlin, 2008, Laskar & Gastineau, 2009). This chaotic behavior results from an…
The long-term evolution of the solar system is chaotic. In some cases, chaotic diffusion caused by an overlap of secular resonances can increase the eccentricity of planets when they enter into a linear secular resonance, driving the system…
We study the chaotic orbital evolution of planetary systems, focusing on secular (i.e., orbit-averaged) interactions, because these often dominate on long timescales. We first focus on the evolution of a test particle that is forced by…
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…
A statistical analysis is performed over more than 1001 different integrations of the secular equations of the Solar system over 5 Gyr. With this secular system, the probability of the eccentricity of Mercury to reach 0.6 in 5 Gyr is about…
A long-term numerical integration of the classical Newtonian approximation to the planetary orbital motions of the full Solar System (sun + 8 planets), spanning 20 Gyr, was performed. The results showed no severe instability arising over…
The inner solar system's modern orbital architecture provides inferences into the epoch of terrestrial planet formation; a ~100 Myr time period of planet growth via collisions with planetesimals and other proto-planets. While classic…
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 long-term variations in the orbit of the Earth govern the insolation on its surface and hence its climate. The use of the astronomical signal, whose imprint has been recovered in the geological records, has revolutionized the…
Although the discovery of the chaotic motion of the inner planets in the solar system dates back to more than thirty years ago, the secular chaos of their orbits still dares more analytical analyses. Apart from the high-dimensional…
Due to the chaotic nature of the Solar System, the question of its dynamic long-term stability can only be answered in a statistical sense, e.g. based on numerical ensemble integrations of nearby orbits. Destabilization, including…
Apart from being chaotic, the inner planets in the Solar System constitute an open system, as they are forced by the regular long-term motion of the outer ones. No integrals of motion can bound a priori the stochastic wanderings in their…
The absence of planets interior to Mercury continues to puzzle terrestrial planet formation models, particularly when contrasted with the relatively high derived occurrence rates of short-period planets around Sun-like stars. Recent work…
The dynamical stability of tightly packed exoplanetary systems remains poorly understood. While for a two-planet system a sharp stability boundary exists, numerical simulations of three and more planet systems show that they can experience…
We present a comprehensive statistical study of the radial evolution of solar wind turbulence near Mercury's orbit using long-term magnetic field measurements from the MESSENGER mission. Owing to Mercury's highly elliptical orbit and the…
Due to the chaotic nature of the Solar System, the question of its long-term stability can only be answered in a statistical sense, for instance, based on numerical ensemble integrations of nearby orbits. Destabilization of the inner…
Modern terrestrial planet formation models are highly successful at consistently generating planets with masses and orbits analogous to those of Earth and Venus. In stark contrast to classic theoretical predictions and inferred demographics…
Impact basins identified by Mariner 10 and Messenger flyby images provide us a fossilized record of the impactor flux of asteroids on Mercury during the last stages of the early Solar System. The distribution of these basins is not uniform…
Of the solar system's four terrestrial planets, the origin of Mercury is perhaps the most mysterious. Modern numerical simulations designed to model the dynamics of terrestrial planet formation systematically fail to replicate Mercury;…
The planets' gravitational interaction causes rhythmic changes in Earth's orbital parameters (also called Milankovi\'c cycles), which have powerful applications in geology and astrochronology. For instance, the primary astronomical…