A vast network of invisible energy structures was discovered in the solar system – a celestial overhead pathway that future space explorers could use to study distant corners of solar space.
These hidden energy structures, called manifolds, appear space-time as a result of the graphical interaction of large objects like the planets, said Nataša Todorović, mathematician at the Serbian Astronomical Observatory Belgrade and lead author of a discovered paper. While astronomers have long known about such paths, and even used them to navigate our cloudy neighborhood, the new study has revealed a new shape in these exchanges: “arches of chaos” which is an unprecedented “decorative structure” that has evolved over decades. And this discovery could help explain the secret behavior of comets and other little things that dance erroneously in and out of this part of the universe.
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Manifolds are essentially the rapid cosmic sequences that emerge from the complex attraction between celestial objects. “Gravitational [manifolds] they are just a catalog of some unusual paths that look ‘free fall’ through the solar system, “meaning paths where something seems to fall, like Newton’s apple, on a path according to the weight of a large object, said Shane Ross, of Virginia Tech University aerospace engineer who began studying these structures.
“Here on Earth, close to the ground, free fall paths look a bit boring – a collection of straight lines pointing to the ground (for materials starting from rest, such as a falling rock) and parabolic lines if the object was given an initial horizontal distance. , as a founding member, “Ross, who was not involved in the current study, told Live Science.” But imagine a rock starting farther from Earth, actually close to the moon. “
At that point, the shape of the gravity passages becomes more complex. A little embroidery can make a big difference – sensitivity math refers to it as chaos. As the gravity of the Earth and the gravity of the moon get closer and closer to equilibrium, chaos increases, and the exchanges become more complex.
“I understand one multiplication as the boundary between chaos and order,” said study co-author Di Wu, an engineering researcher at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD).
Todorović, Wu and Aaron Rosengren, who was also an engineering researcher at UCSD, studied collections emanating from the “Lagrange points” of each planet with the sun, which are points where the horrors of both can come together to hold smaller items in a fixed position. in a place that is related to the planet.
A third object orbiting the sun at Lagrange’s location would seem to hang in space from the planet’s point of view because of this gravitational effect.
The researchers studied these exchanges by simulating the solar system on a computer and passing “test pieces” through it, like thousands of tiny spaceships. Over time, the trails followed by these spacecraft revealed the true shape of the expansions emanating from the Lagrange points of planets like the gas giants.
The Jupiter exchanges, they found, form a bow shape, with more chaotic expansion around the most orderly manifold in the center. Every Jovian new year, Jupiter makes a new bow, and they pile up over time. The omens also follow the bows of Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
These bow exchanges seem to explain the behavior of asteroids and comets that tend to hang around Jupiter before suddenly jumping into a deep space or entering the solar system. -in.
Over a hundred years in the researchers ’simulation, thousands of test grains passing through Jupiter Langrange’s points changed course and exploded out toward Neptune. Some completed that great journey in less than a decade.
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These big changes could also explain why small objects propelled by a large planet often behave in expected ways – so that they don’t. Comets around Jupiter have been seen abruptly changing their orbits after long periods of instability.
Researchers have long thought of manifolds as creating an “interplanetary superhighway,” Rosengren said. So it’s no surprise that Jupiter’s gravity can help things reach a deep expanse.
“However, it is a unique aspect of our research that has not been seen to date [full] the structure of this high passage, “Rosengren told Living Science.” What has also been revealed is the incredible depth to which the omens of Jupiter ‘s vicinity can pass through the solar system. ”
We hope this new understanding will lead to a more advanced approach to space missions, Rosengren said. A probe riding expertly on chaos arches may reach its destination much faster and use less fuel than conventional probes, which rely on blunter navigation methods that do not describe only one major source of gravity (such as Jupiter, or the sun) at one time.
“More research is needed to understand the shape of the bow,” Rosengren said.
The bows seem to connect to each other in a hidden elegant logic.
“As to why they connect in such a beautiful, open-ended pattern, we still don’t have the slightest idea.”
First published on Living Science.