The Motion of a Particle in Orbit around a Growing Mass.

Stephen H. Dole

Expert InsightsPublished 1973

Addresses the question, "What happens to the orbital eccentricity of a particle in orbit around a body that is accumulating mass by accretion, as the planets may have done?" A JOSS program was devised, involving iterative solution of Kepler's equation for a satellite's orbit while the central body's mass increased 0.01% daily for 2400 days. The output showed the satellite particle's orbital eccentricity increasing with mass additions while it lies in the second and third quadrants, and decreasing while in the first and fourth. Eccentricity increases most when additions are made at apogee, and decreases most at perigee. Although the particle spends more than half the time in the second and third quadrants, the changes are stronger in the first and fourth. The cumulative effect of regular mass additions to the primary is to leave the satellite's orbital eccentricity substantially unchanged. Thus, it appears that we must seek elsewhere for an explanation of the observed low orbital eccentricities in the solar system. 3 pp. (MW)

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Dole, Stephen H., The Motion of a Particle in Orbit around a Growing Mass. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 1973. https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P5069.html.
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