Related papers: Euler, Jacobi, and Missions to Comets and Asteroid…
A body dissipates energy when it freely rotates about any axis different from principal. This entails relaxation, i.e., decrease of the rotational energy, with the angular momentum preserved. The spin about the major-inertia axis…
When a solid body is freely rotating at an angular velocity ${\bf \Omega}$, the ellipsoid of constant angular momentum, in the space $\Omega_1, \Omega_2, \Omega_3$, has poles corresponding to spinning about the minimal-inertia and…
Neutron stars, asteroids, comets, cosmic-dust granules, spacecraft, as well as whatever other freely spinning body dissipate energy when they rotate about any axis different from principal. We discuss the internal-dissipation-caused…
Asteroids and comets dissipate energy when they rotate about the axis different from the axis of the maximal moment of inertia. We show that the most efficient internal relaxation happens at the double frequency of body's tumbling.…
Precession is one of the important mechanisms of gravitational wave generation in astrophysics. In general, free precession of a rigid body can be caused by the rotation of a triaxial body. In the case of symmetric body, if only the…
Asteroids are leftover pieces from the era of planet formation that help us understand conditions in the early Solar System. Unlike larger planetary bodies that were subject to global thermal modification during and subsequent to their…
The spin axis of a rotationally deformed planet is forced to precess about its orbital angular momentum vector, due to the tidal gravity of its host star, if these directions are misaligned. This induces internal fluid motions inside the…
Precession is a unique motion in which the orientation of the rotational axis of a rotating body is not fixed but moving, and it generally exists in the Universe from giant stars through tiny atomic nuclei. In principle, the precession of…
Euler's equations of motion are derived exactly for a rigid, triaxial, internally frictionless neutron star spinning down electromagnetically in vacuo. It is shown that the star precesses, but not freely: its regular precession relative to…
Motion of many comets is affected by non-gravitational forces caused by outgassing from their surfaces. Outgassing also produces reactive torques resulting in cometary spin evolution. We propose that the two processes are correlated and…
The rotational distribution of asteroids as a function of their size is used {as a diagnostic of} their physical properties and evolution. Recent photometric surveys from the Gaia mission, allowing observation of asteroids with long spin…
Some asteroids eject dust, producing transient, comet-like comae and tails; these are the active asteroids. The causes of activity in this newly-identified population are many and varied. They include impact ejection and disruption,…
We consider the physics of free precession of a rotating neutron star with an oblique magnetic field. We show that if the magnetic stresses are large enough, then there is no possibility of steady rotation, and precession is inevitable.…
Motivated by the observation of comets and asteroids rotating in non-principal axis (NPA) states, we investigate the relaxation of a freely precessing triaxial ellipsoidal rotator towards its lowest-energy spin state. Relaxation of the…
Some asteroids eject dust, unexpectedly producing transient, comet-like comae and tails. First ascribed to the sublimation of near-surface water ice, mass losing asteroids (also called "main-belt comets") can in fact be driven by a…
Through the Rossiter-McLaughlin effect, several hot Jupiters have been found to exhibit spin-orbit misalignment, and even retrograde orbits. The high obliquity observed in these planets can be attributed to two primary formation mechanisms,…
We study the tidal forcing, propagation and dissipation of linear inertial waves in a rotating fluid body. The intentionally simplified model involves a perfectly rigid core surrounded by a deep ocean consisting of a homogeneous…
Recent observations have demonstrated that some subset of even moderately wide-separation planet-hosting binaries are preferentially configured such that planetary and binary orbits appear to lie within the same plane. In this work, we…
We investigate numerically and semi-analytically the collapse of low-mass, rotating prestellar cores. Initially, the cores are in approximate equilibrium with low rotation (the initial ratio of thermal to gravitational energy is $\alpha_0…
The orbits of binary stars precess as a result of general relativistic effects, forces arising from the asphericity of the stars, and forces from additional stars or planets in the system. For most binaries, the theoretical and observed…