Planet 9 and the Inclination of the Solar Equator
Abstract
It has been recently proposed (Batygin and Brown, 2016; Brown and Batygin, 2016) that the existence of a distant 10-Earth mass planet in the outer Solar System, commonly known as Planet 9, could explain the orbital quasi-alignment of the six objects with the largest semimajor axis in the Kuiper Belt. This putative distant planet should have an orbit with semimajor axis between 300 and 900 AU, perihelion distance between 200 and 350 AU, and orbital inclination of about 30 degrees to the ecliptic plane. Here we evaluate the effects of Planet 9 on the dynamics of the "inner" giant planets of the Solar System: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. We find that, given the large distance of Planet 9, the dynamics of the inner giant planets can be decomposed into a classic Lagrange-Laplace dynamics relative to their own invariant plane (the plane orthogonal to their total angular momentum vector) and a slow precession of said plane relative to the total angular momentum vector of the Solar System, including Planet 9. Under some specific configurations for Planet 9, this precession can explain the current tilt between the invariant plane of the inner giant planets and the solar equator. Given that the planes of the proto-planetary disk and of the solar equator should have coincided, the current tilt of ~6 degrees is surprising and was so far unexplained. An analytical model is developed to map the evolution of the inclination of the inner giant planets' invariable plane as a function of the Planet 9's mass, inclination, eccentricity and semimajor axis, and some numerical simulations of the equations of motion of the giant planets and Planet 9 are performed to validade our analytical approach. Some of the Planet 9 configurations that allow explaining the current solar tilt are compatible with those proposed to explain the orbital confinement of the most distant Kuiper belt objects. Thus, this work on the one hand gives an elegant explanation for the current tilt between the invariant plane of the inner giant planets and the solar equator and on the other hand, adds new constraints to the orbital elements of Planet 9. Acknowledgment FAPESP 2015/18682-6.
- Publication:
-
AAS/Division for Planetary Sciences Meeting Abstracts #48
- Pub Date:
- October 2016
- Bibcode:
- 2016DPS....4810509D