Other
Scientific paper
Jul 2007
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007dda....38.1315h&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DDA meeting #38, #13.15
Other
Scientific paper
Most stars form in open clusters composed of 100 stars that stay in close proximity for 10^7 years or longer (Elmegreen et al, 2000). The Sun is also likely to have formed in such a dense environment, and it is reasonable to ask whether the gravitational perturbations from the nearby cluster stars might have had some influence upon the recently-formed Solar System. To examine this, Nbody simulations are used to assess the disturbances that the numerous other cluster stars might have exerted on the early Solar System.
As one might expect, it is the orbits of the more distant members of the Solar System---Neptune and the more distant Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs)---that are most sensitive to perturbations from passing stars, as was demonstrated by Ida et al (2000). We also use our Nbody simulations, coupled with the near circularity of Neptune's orbit and the existence of the Kuiper Belt, to place strong constraints on the lifetime and density of the stellar cluster in which the Sun is presumed to have formed in.
We also find that passing cluster stars can easily pump up the KBOs inclinations by 15 degrees, which might account for the high inclinations observed among members of the Belt's dynamically 'hot' population. However, accounting for the Belt's dynamically 'cold' population, whose inclinations are only 2 degrees (Brown 2001), then becomes more problematic. Nonetheless, these same simulations show that passing stars will also interact with the Scattered Disk (which are Neptune-scattered KBOs), and that such interactions can perturb some KBOs beyond Neptune's reach, inserting them into the domain of high-perihelion orbits known the Extended Scattered Disk (also seen in simulations by Fernandez & Brunini 2000). These results, and other findings, will be discussed further at conference time.
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