The researchers take a deep dive into the outer solar system, a busy place filled with dwarf planets, icy moons, space debris and studied planetary oddities like Sedna - a minor planet orbits sun at a distance of 8 billion miles but separated from the rest of the solar system.
One theory for its unusual dynamics is that as-of-yet unseen planet nine may have disturbed the orbits of Sedna and other detached objects, but the researchers found that the orbit of Sedna and its ilk may result from these bodies jostling against each other and space debris in the outer solar system.
"There are so many of these bodies out there. What does their collective gravity do?" said Professor Ann-Marie Madigan of the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences (APS). "We can solve a lot of these problems by just taking into account that question."
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| Artist's drawing of the outer planets of the solar system surrounded by the Kuiper Belt. Image Credit: NASA |
Detached objects like Sedna complete humongous circular orbits and thought to have formed closer to the Sun, along with planets, satellites, asteroids and other objects, but how they got to the outer solar system on their own is an ongoing mystery.
Using supercomputer simulations, the team came up with one possible answer that these icy objects orbit the sun like the hands of a clock. The orbits of smaller objects, such as asteroids, move like the minute hand or relatively fast and others, the orbits of bigger objects like Sedna, move more slowly. They’re the hour hand and eventually, those hands meet.
"You see a pileup of the orbits of smaller objects to one side of the sun," said Jacob Fleisig, lead author of the study. "These orbits crash into the bigger body, and what happens is those interactions will change its orbit from an oval shape to a more circular shape."
In simple words, Sedna's orbit goes from normal to detached entirely because of those small-scale interactions, the bigger a detached object gets, the farther away its orbit becomes from the sun.
Extinction of Dinosaurs
The findings may also provide clues around another phenomenon - the extinction of the dinosaurs. As space debris interacts in the outer solar system, the orbits of these objects tighten and widen in a repeating cycle.
This cycle could wind up shooting comets toward the inner solar system, including in the direction of Earth - on a predictable timescale. "While we're not able to say that this pattern killed the dinosaurs," Fleisig said, "it's tantalizing."
Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Robert Hurt
Source: University Of Colorado
A very good article. Interesting no need for a 'Death Star' type planet circling in on a very long cycle raining, comets down on us every few million years. Just a simi periodic clumping and alignment of loosely attached bodies.
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