Planetesimal Migration in the Early Days or Taking the Solar System by Störmer

Much of our understanding of the dynamical evolution of the Solar System stems from long-term computational simulations of planet and planetesimal evolution.  Though these simulations routinely model orbital evolution over millions, even billions, of years, planetesimal evolution is driven primarily by the comparatively brief periods when they have close encounters with planets.

Dr. Grazier will describe a multistep scheme that achieves the theoretical lower bounds for the propagation of error over long simulations intervals and integrates close encounters very accurately. We then present a summary of our investigation into three different early Solar System scenarios:  whether Jupiter protected Earth from asteroids in the early Solar System, the icy nature of Ceres, and the interrelation between Centaur Asteroids and the Kuiper Scattered Disk.

Speaker: Dr. Kevin Grazier, GSF-75