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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 4.

Survival of the outer solar system under stochastic mass loss. Panel (A) shows the fraction of systems remaining stable versus time since white dwarf formation, per Mej (colors; solid: ejections throughout the giant-branch phases; dashed: AGB-only), from 3 Gyr integrations without external perturbers. Each curve follows the 48 realizations of each cell; systems that go unstable during the mass loss itself enter the plot at a correspondingly reduced t = 0 survival value, and onset times are resolved at the 5 Myr cadence of the stability diagnostics. Shaded bands show the 68% statistical (Wilson) uncertainty of each curve (48 systems per curve); the 3 × 10−7 M curves, statistically indistinguishable from 10−7 M, are omitted for clarity. Panel (B) depicts the instability onset time versus the minimum adjacent Hill-unit separation of the end state; negative separations denote pairs already reordered or crossing at white dwarf formation. Downward triangles mark systems destabilized during mass loss itself; the count-bearing triangle beyond the left edge tallies the 15 such systems crossing more deeply than the plotted range, and the star marks the unkicked, adiabatically expanded solar system.

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