Thursday, October 29, 2020

The fifth giant

As the outer planets shuffled around, they constrained the formation of Mars and the asteroids, and locked Earth and Venus into our present resonance. They altered their own orbits as well.

Here is one model - Jupiter:Saturn ratio was 2:1. Corresponding to 24:12 of our present years consider present 29:12 - from Saturn's perspective Jupiter's period has shortened 24/29. By Kepler, Jupiter and Saturn have drifted mutually apart. And 24:12 = 2:1 is not stable; it squeezes the orbits into eccentricities. This 2:1 wasn't preferred in the "Nice Model" on account all these orbits are today evened out.

To solve that multibody problem, the modelers propose beyond Saturn a super duper Chiron. It got ejected. That angular momentum helped fix the survivors' orbits, mainly Saturn's I imagine, which orbits now [relatively] further from Jupiter than it did.

Wonder if that's Planet Nine. Much as we're not inclined to believe it anymore.

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