Questions tagged [orbital-migration]
Questions regarding the large-scale change of orbits over time, as in the Nice Model.
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The possible Masses and Orbits of Hypothetical Moons of Proxima Centauri b
This question asks about the phases of a hypothetical moon of Proxima Centauri b.
What phases of a moon orbiting Proxima Centauri b could be seen?
And In my answer I suggest that Proxima Centauri b ...
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What is secular chaos?
I have been reading about planet migration, and have seen secular chaos being mentioned a few times. There is no Wikipedia article on it so I am struggling to find a summary explanation of what ...
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In a multi-planet system, what mechanism can cause the innermost planet's semi-major axis to increase?
I've been toying around with n-body simulations (using research-grade software) and I've noticed a particular effect in many of my simulations: In many arbitrary multi-planet systems I simulate, there ...
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Could Mercury be a some kind of Chthonian?
A recent news article mentioned that Mercury has an unusually large core - meaning it is denser than the other rocky planets in the solar system.
It made me wonder if Mercury could have started as an ...
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What can be the minimum time for a somewhat stable twin star orbit to collapse on being affected by a third body?
The third 'invading' celestial body passing by or crashing into one of the stars could be a possible reason for the orbit collapse. Something that throws the stars* off-course speeding up their death ...
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Intuitive explanation of the source of energy that cause Jupiter and Saturn to migrate outward in the Grand Tack Hypothesis?
The Grand Tack Hypothesis states that Jupiter first migrate inward, but it was caught up by the faster inward migration of Saturn, and when the two planets reached 3:2 mean-motion resonance they ...
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Why are solar systems stable and not chaotic?
I am not trained in applied mathematics and am asking as a layperson.
It seems that the motions of the planets can be reliably predicted for thousands of years. Yet, if we consider a relatively simple ...
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Which will destroy the Earth first: the Sun or Jupiter?
The sun is expected to grow in brightness over time, slowly heating the Earth until the oceans evaporate, leaving the planet uninhabitable.
Jupiter is the source of the largest perturbations to Earth'...
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How co-planar and co-rotatory are the Milky Way and its constituents?
All the planets in the solar system rotate roughly in a plane that intersects the sun.
Stars in the Milky Way rotate around its centre forming a rough planar disk.
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Are these planes all ...
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Is Jupiter really shepherding the main belt, and Neptune the Kuiper belt?
By "dominating another object's orbit" my understanding is that the most massive body's gravity has so much influence that, when they come close, it makes the other body/bodies' orbits shift ...
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Has the Oort cloud moved?
Planets have migrated throughout the history of the solar system, and some planets could even have swapped positions. Assuming the Oort cloud does exist, has it always been at its current distance ...
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How can the Earth and the Moon be in synchronous rotation if the Moon won't be in geostationary orbit?
It is said that the Moon moves away from Earth and that during the Sun's red giant or white dwarf phase the Moon will be about 40% farther than now and in a synchronous rotation ("hantle rotation&...
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What would happen to the Earth if the orbit of another planet in the Solar System was disrupted by a cataclysmic collision with a large body?
There's plenty of speculation about what would happen if a large asteroid collided with the Earth itself, but less about the effect on Earth of a large asteroid or even a moon or minor planet ...
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The compatibility of the Grand Tack hypothesis with the "core-warping impact" theory of Jupiter's diffuse core
In recent years, the Juno mission revealed that Jupiter's core was much more diffuse than astronomers had expected.
One theory is that "within a few million years" of its formation, Jupiter ...
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What would happen if the earth's orbit were slightly perturbed?
Suppose a rogue planet came zipping through the solar system and changed the earth's orbit a little, including the plane of the orbit.
I have the idea that, in a complex system, orbits would tend ...
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Could there be a M-type asteroid beyond Jupiter?
Is there any reason to think an M-type asteroid could not have migrated beyond Jupiter and entered an orbit similar to the Centaurs?
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Orbital Resonance
First, let me verify that this statement is correct:
Planets will tend to migrate toward stable orbital resonances with other planets around the host star. There are unstable resonances, also, where ...
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How young could the asteroid belt be?
I heard a theory (possibly from a crackpot) that there was an event in our solar system where two objects collided and created the asteroid belt, the orbits of some of the planets were altered, and ...
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Moons of migrated giant planets: Icy, Rocky, or none at all?
My understanding is that gas and ice giants form outside the "snow line" of their protoplanetary disk, then sometimes through gravitational interactions they are able to migrate into the inner star ...
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Direction of major axis of moon's orbit
Does the major axis of the moon's orbit point in the same direction (with small deviations) throughout the year? or does it migrate along a path so that after a million years it might be 90° away from ...
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Hypothetically, if the sun stays the same size forever, when will the Earth fall into it?
Hypothetically speaking (once again), if the Sun stays the same size forever (i.e. it somehow maintains a stable hydrogen supply and the helium product just disappears), how long would it take before ...
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How would one calculate the synodic period of the Earth and an elliptical orbit?
For example, when would someone with a telescope be able to see Starman and his Roadster (when will the Tesla roadster's elliptical orbit cross ours again, and how would that be calculated?)
For two ...
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When the Moon formed and early on, did it orbit over the Earth's equator?
Or was it always at about 5.14 degrees inclination or has the inclination changed over time?
See diagram.
James K's answer to this question got me thinking about this, and I don't mean to call him ...
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Does the Giant Impact Hypothesis explain how the Moon circularized its orbit?
I just read most of Wikipedia's article on the Giant Impact Hypothesis. Basically a large object impacts Earth and creates debris that soon coalesces into the Moon.
But there is something I did not ...
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Any observed example of a planet hitting its parent star?
I did some research and a likely candidate is hot Jupiter type migration where the orbit didn't stabilize and crashed into the parent star.
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How to lose the moon?
In this worldbuilding question, the moon is gone:
an extra-solar gas giant passed close by Earth in which the Moon was
knocked from orbit to become a planet in an independent orbit, as well
as ...
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About how many revolutions has the Earth made around the sun?
The Earth is about 4.543 billion years old.
However, the length of a year can be changed by anything from an impact to a natural cycle of orbit changes to a slow drift toward or away from the sun to ...
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On gravitational wave radiation and arrangement of galaxies post- big bang
Orbits of planets and stars decay due to gravitational wave radiation. An elliptical orbit would become more circular with time. This is especially observed well in binary systems.
Taking the example ...
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The Three Elements in the Milankovitch Cycles
According to the Serbian geophysicist Milutin Milankovitch, there are three elements that make an ice age possible:
Eccentricity (orbital shape): Varying between 0.000055 and 0.0679 over the course ...
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What is the magnitude of variation of Earth's orbital inclination?
Please excuse if this has been asked and I just didn't find it.
I have found several references that indicate that the inclination of Earth's orbit varies over a period of ~70,000 years, but I can't ...
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Why do the gas giants in the Solar System have comparatively large orbits compared to the inner planets?
Ever since I observed the depictions of the Solar System, I was obsessed with the question of why the gas giants (outer planets) have very large orbits, compared to the planets that are closer to the ...
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Would it be possible to equip an asteroid to collect space junk in Earth's orbit? [closed]
We all have heard about the problem with space junk in low earth orbit. NASA has a plan to put an asteroid in orbit around the moon. Would it be possible to equip propulsion systems onto an asteroid ...
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Orbital eccentricity variation of the other planets?
On Earth, it's fairly well published, mostly in climate change related articles, that the Earth's orbital eccentricity operates on a 413,000 year cycle with roughly 90,000–125,000 year variation ...
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Do planets migrate suddenly or gradually?
Current models of the configurations of the planets conclude that Neptune once migrated outwards. AFAIK this refurbishment came about by Jupiter and Saturn gradually getting into and leaving a ...
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Resources on planetary stability
I am a fifth (and last) year undergraduate student in Physics with good level of Mathematics formation and basic Astrophysics formation. I recently read some theories about Solar System formation and ...
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How did pre-Earth's mass and orbit change at the Moon formation event?
The popular, but still disputable, Moon formation theory is that a pre-Earth was hit by a Mars sized planet. The mass ratio of Earth:Mars:Moon is roughly 100:10:1.
Does this mean that pre-Earth was ...
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What is a "jumping trojan"? And what do their orbits look like?
I was googling Neptune's trojan companions and found on Wiki this claim about ~200 km diameter (316179) 2010 EN65:
" the object is actually a jumping trojan, is jumping from the
Lagrangian point ...
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How many nested stable (1 Mio years) orbits are theoretically possible?
If we look at our solar system we have the sun which has planet orbits and planets have moon orbits.
If we look at the possible size difference from hypergiants to small asteroids why shouldn't it be ...
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How has the Earth's orbit changed over hundreds of millions or billion of years?
First, I know that modeling orbital mechanics of 8 planets is hard, but there are some theories out there, for example, Jupiter is thought to have moved in towards the sun then started moving away. ...
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Orbital resonances and position of planets
I am interested in quick generation of planetary systems for programs similar to Space Engine or Pioneer Space Simulator. As far as I understand, formation of planets is a complex process and the ...
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Are there sufficient observational data to measure non-Newtonian perihelion advances of any Asteroid and Comet orbits?
Anomalous (i.e. not predicted from Newtonian theory) advances of the perihelion direction have been observed for many solar system planet orbits and have been accounted for by Einstein's General ...
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Are astronomers continuously monitoring exoplanetary systems?
I'm reading many of the Wikipedia pages about exoplanets and the different methods they are using to detect them. But I wonder, it seems that the emphasis is on detecting and finding new exoplanets, ...
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Can orbital migration cause a planet to crash into the sun?
If the planets move out of their current orbits into other orbits over long periods of time could this cause a planet to crash into the sun? Maybe the term crash is a little dramatic, could the orbit ...
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How do kepler orbits account for planetary migration?
This article got me thinking if kepler orbits explain how a planet moves in a solar system how can a planet migrate as explained in the article. At some point don't the kepler orbits must need some ...
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Is there any evidence that the Gas Giant planets in our solar system are experiencing orbital migration?
Planetary migration is defined by Lubow and Ida (2010) in their article Planet Migration as
the process by which a planet’s orbital radius changes in time. The
main agent for causing gas giant ...
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