Solar system chaos and the distribution of asteroid orbits

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Abstract
We describe results from numerical simulations to follow the orbits of hundreds of test particles that originate from low-inclination orbits in the terrestrial domain, in a model of the Solar system which includes all major planets. Our 3-Myr integration shows that a general feature of the asteroidal trajectories is a large Liapunov exponent, i.e. the orbits are chaotic with an astronomically short e-folding time for deviations. An exception to this is the region in which the real asteroids are found. Our computations also explain the low number of asteroids in the interplanetary region of the terrestrial planets. We confirm the results of other investigators concerning the Liapunov exponent of the Solar system itself: from a 200-Myr integration of the entire Solar system, an e-folding time of about 6 Myr is obtained.

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