mean-motion resonance tagged posts

Brazilian researchers dated the families using a numerical simulation method to process current data to go back in time to the asteroid formation era (image: NASA)

Researchers dated the families using a numerical simulation method to process current data to go back in time to the asteroid formation era. Four families of extremely young asteroids have been identified by researchers affiliated with São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Guaratinguetá, Brazil. An article on the discovery has been published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

“We identified the new families by means of numerical simulation using the backward integration method (BIM), which is much more precise than other methods for dating asteroid families...

This artistic rendering shows the distant view from Planet Nine back towards the sun. The planet is thought to be gaseous, similar to Uranus and Neptune. Hypothetical lightning lights up the night side. Credit: Caltech/R. Hurt (IPAC)

Evidence has been found of a giant planet tracing an elongated orbit in the outer solar system, nicknamed Planet Nine, has a mass ~10X that of Earth and orbits ~20X farther from the sun on average than Neptune (which orbits the sun at an average distance of 2.8 billion miles). In fact, it would take this new planet between 10,000 and 20,000 years to make just one full orbit around the sun. Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown, discovered the planet’s existence through mathematical modeling and computer simulations but have not yet observed the object directly.

“T...