2016/04/01 by C. de la Fuente Marcos, R. de la Fuente Marcos · 3 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #Astro and Planetary Science #High-pressure geophysics and materials #Stellar, planetary, and galactic studies #astro-ph.EP
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/mnrasl/slw077
published as Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 2016, 460 (1): L64-L68 (July 21, 2016) · 5 pages, 3 figures, 2 tables. Revised to match version published in MNRAS: Letters
openalex publication_date 2016/04/01 · arxiv created 2016/05/05 · arxiv updated 2016/05/16 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Many asteroids in the main and trans-Neptunian belts are trapped in mean motion resonances with Jupiter and Neptune, respectively. As a side effect, they experience accidental commensurabilities among themselves. These commensurabilities define characteristic patterns that can be used to trace the source of the observed resonant behaviour. Here, we explore systematically the existence of commensurabilities between the known ETNOs using their heliocentric and barycentric semimajor axes, their uncertainties, and Monte Carlo techniques. We find that the commensurability patterns present in the known ETNO population resemble those found in the main and trans-Neptunian belts. Although based on small number statistics, such patterns can only be properly explained if most, if not all, of the known ETNOs are subjected to the resonant gravitational perturbations of yet undetected trans-Plutonian planets. We show explicitly that some of the statistically significant commensurabilities are compatible with the Planet Nine hypothesis; in particular, a number of objects may be trapped in the 5:3 and 3:1 mean motion resonances with a putative Planet Nine with semimajor axis of about 700 au.