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Okay, so as long as you have 3 or more bodies, I understand ejection. Energy gets transferred semi-randomly such that eventually one body gains too much energy and shoots out.

But when N=2, what is the ejection mechanism? That's an elliptical orbit that should be spinning round and round forever (sans the losses via gravitational waves).



You mean how does the last planet get ejected? Well, that's an interesting question, actually. Because of the inherent stability of the 2 body system, the last planet gets ejected some ~50 billion years after the others.

The authors' simulation takes into account the fact that a star comes close enough to the Solar System to have some tangible effect every 23M years or so. It's the cumulative effect of these stellar flybys that eventually nudges the last planet out of the system.


Ok, external perturbation, got it.

Yeah, that makes sense. Otherwise it would just very slowly spiral in, due to losses from general relativity.


Yep, and loss of angular momentum due to it being carried away by gravity waves would probably take many trillions of years, I would guess.


> the fact that a star comes close enough to the Solar System to have some tangible effect every 23M years or so

Do you have a good source that expands on this? That sounds so interesting.




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