Monday, April 11, 2022

Pluto's Orbit Is Metastable

A new paper examining some unusual features of Pluto's orbit concludes that the gas giant planets interact in a complex manner to produce its orbit. Two of them stabilize that orbit, while one of them destabilizes it. 

"Neptune account for the azimuthal constraint on Pluto's perihelion location," and "Jupiter has a largely stabilizing influence whereas Uranus has a largely destabilizing influence on Pluto's orbit. Overall, Pluto's orbit is rather surprisingly close to a zone of strong chaos."

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