Long term evolution and chaotic motion of the planets in the Solar System

Date

Oct 29, 2013

Time

4:40 PM - 6:10 PM

Speaker

Prof. Dr. Jacques Laskar

Affiliation

CNRS, Observatoire de Paris

Series

TUD Physikalisches Kolloquium

Language

en

Main Topic

Physik

Other Topics

Physik

Host

Prof. Dr. Carsten Timm, Fachrichtung Physik

Description

Since its formulation by Newton, the problem of the stability of the Solar
System has fascinated astronomers and mathematicians, searching to prove its
stability. This quest also gave birth to many important developments in
mathematics although their origin has often been lost in academic teaching. In
particular, Henri Poincaré demonstrated that the perturbative methods of the
astronomers could not be used to provide an answer to the problem of stability
on infinite time because the series that were used by astronomers are in general
divergent. Nevertheless, in the following of the work of Poincaré, since the
work of Kolmogorov in 1954, KAM theorems have provided new hopes for
mathematicians to prove the stability of the Solar System. On the opposite, the
recent numerical works on realistic models of the Solar System show that the
system is unstable in the strong sense and that planetary collisions are
possible within the lifetime of the Sun.

These instabilities in the motion of the planets result in an increase of the
uncertainty of the solutions by a factor of 10 every 10 million of years in the
numerical integrations of the system. The situation is even worse when the
largest asteroids are taken into account, and it will never be possible to
obtain a precise evolution of the Earth orbit over more than about 60 Myr.

These limitations are of particular importance when one attempts to use the
astronomical variations of the insolation at the surface of the Earth to derive
an absolute geological time scale.

Links

• http://tu-dresden.de/veranstaltungen/termin?id=TUD524999acec250

Last modified: Oct 29, 2013, 8:58:25 AM