Thursday, December 10, 2020

Bridge of Chaos

No, this isn't a Hellbound: The Blood War spinoff, it's the new solar-system superhighway. This one for the outer planets; we've already had one for the inner, since the late 1990s at least, and it stinks.

Known in the n-body problem are trajectories which, at certain angles between Jupiter and Saturn, will eject a small body WAY out there, VERY fast. Nataša Todorović and her crew have identified a pattern here which, perhaps, we can use to sling craft out to Uranus or Neptune (or past both, but this doesn't happen often). Or to Uranus and some KBO like Pluto. In clearer terms from 5 AU to 30 AU in a decade.

Libration Points make an appearance. L1 and L2, although the PhysOrg release confuses these with the Greeks and Trojans, L4/L5. Fortunately you may read the paper. Between L1 and L2 is the Hill Sphere, which I've learnt not to care about for stable orbits, but is vitally relevant to Todorović: for perturbing trajectories past a planet. For L4 and L5, they're suggesting a possible answer to a minor puzzle in observed behaviour, which differs between the L4 Greeks and the L5 Trojans. Seems L5 is less stable - slightly. Still quite stable tho'.

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