Putting the Chaos and Instability of the Terrestrial Planets in Context
Résumé
Past work has shown that the dynamical evolution of the solar system's terrestrial planets is chaotic. Further, the inner planets seem to be near the edge of stability, as Mercury has a ~1% chance of colliding with the Sun or Venus in the next 5 Gyrs. Meanwhile, models of terrestrial planet formation have been tuned to reproduce numerous features of the inner solar system. We compare the long-term dynamical evolution of terrestrial planet systems formed in simulations with that of our own solar system, both in terms of stability and chaos. In addition, we attempt to use the diffusion of planetary eccentricities to predict the timescale in which systems of chaotic orbits will eventually become unstable.