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Terminal Instability of the Solar System Triggered by Stochastic Solar Mass Loss

  • Authors: Konstantin Batygin, Jim Fuller, Fred C. Adams

Konstantin Batygin et al 2026 The Astrophysical Journal Letters 1009 .

  • Provider: AAS Journals

Caption: Figure 1.

Episodic mass loss randomizes the giant planets’ period ratios. Evolution of PS/PJ, PU/PS, and PN/PU through the mass-loss epoch for the four decade-spaced ejection masses Mej = 10−7, 10−6, 10−5, and 10−4 M (color scale; twelve realizations each, all-phases variant), against the adiabatic track (black), which conserves all three ratios. Right margins: final-ratio distributions (48 realizations per Mej); horizontal bars mark cell medians, count-bearing triangles tally seeds beyond the plotted range, and gray crosses count realizations whose ratio is undefined after an ejection leaves an orbit unbound. Gray bands: the 5:2 libration domain in panel A and the 2:1 domain in panel (C), mapped at the final stellar mass 0.54 M at adiabatic eccentricities; dotted lines mark the commensurabilities. Across this range of Mej the accumulated stellar kick speed ﹩{{ \mathcal D }}_{v}^{1/2}﹩ spans 0.018–0.58 km s−1.

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