A new theory to explain the stability of the solar system PhysRevX
The long-term motion of the planets in the Solar System is a long-standing issue, going back to Newton. Numerical simulations reveal a remarkable stability of the orbits of the inner planets . While their motion is chaotic and unpredictable beyond 5 million years, the typical time to wait for catastrophic events is larger than the age of the Universe. This timescale separation is fascinating, as there is no way to constrainthe chaotic variations of the orbits.
We show that the long-term motion of the inner planets is described by a slow-fast dynamical system, with fundamental timescales ranging from 5 to 500 million years. Moreover, a set of symmetries characterizes the strongest planet interactions responsible for the orbital chaos. They are broken only by weak interactions, leading to the existence of quasiconserved quantities that represent the slowest degrees of freedom of the dynamics.
This work opens a window on the dynamical mechanisms that shape the architecture of exoplanetary systems and govern their long-term stability.
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