Abstract
The solar system is like a large natural laboratory, where many dynamical experiments are taking place simultaneously. They range from slow orbital evolution by tiny, accumulating changes due to gravitational perturbations acting over billions (for the satellites, even thousands of billions) of revolutions; to locking phenomena and protection mechanisms caused by resonances; to drastic, essentially unpredictable orbital changes associated again with resonances and with close orbital encounters; to steady evolution driven by non-gravitational interactions (e. g., tides and radiation forces), going on until the bodies are disrupted, removed from the system, or locked into a stable end state. In this Chapter we shall describe in some detail the most important such mechanisms, although often skipping over the rigorous derivations and technicalities that characterize many well established methods of celestial mechanics and dynamical astronomy.
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Further Readings
For the classical treatment of secular perturbations, see D. Brouwer and G.M. Clemence, Methods of Celestial Mechanics, Academic Press, New York (1961) (especially Ch. XVI).
Other treatments of this problem are given by A.E. Roy, Orbital Motion, Hilger, Bristol (1978)
J.G. Williams, Secular Perturbations in the Solar System, Ph. D. Dissertation, Univ. of California, (1969) (with a particular emphasis on the case of asteroids). As regards long-term numerical integration of planetary orbits
see A.E. Roy et al., Project LONGSTOP, Vistas in Astronomy, 32 (1988). On orbital resonances, see S.J. Peale, Orbital Resonances in the Solar System, Annual Reviews of Astronomy and Astrophysics (1976), and R. Greenberg, Orbit-orbit Resonances in the Solar System: Varieties and Similarities, Vistas in Astronomy, 21, (1977).
On tidal evolution, see K. Lambeck, The Earth’s Variable Rotation, Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge (1980), Ch. 10
A.M. Nobili, Secular Effects of Tidal Friction on the Planet-Satellite Systems of the Solar System, The Moon and the Planets 18, pp. 203–216 (1978).
On radiation forces on dust particles, see J. A. Burns, P.L. Lamy and S. Soter, Radiation Forces on Small Particles of the Solar System, Icarus 40, pp. 1–48 (1979)
F. Mignard, Radiation Pressure and Dust Particle Dynamics, Icarus 49, pp. 347–366 (1982).
A brilliant exposition of the theoretical aspects of some of these problems is in V. Béletski, Essais sur le Mouvement des Corps Cosmiques, Editions Mir, Moscow (1986).
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© 1990 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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Bertotti, B., Farinella, P. (1990). Dynamical Evolution of the Solar System. In: Physics of the Earth and the Solar System. Geophysics and Astrophysics Monographs, vol 31. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1916-7_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-1916-7_15
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
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