Thoughts on Solar System Evolution

[emarksmi]

This is related to the long term simulation (Currently at 51,000 years of simulated times) involving a Rogue Jupiter and it's effects on our Solar System.

I've been thinking about how long it would take for orbital dynamics to make a change to a system?  Now the introduction of the Rogue Jupiter size planet into our stable solar system started to have effects within a dozen or so orbits and I more or less expected that.  Now, however, with the rogue planet ejected, it appears that the solar system is approaching a "new normal."  The inner solar system (still Mercury through Mars, but not in that order anymore) seems to be pretty stable over a period of several thousand years (which is thousands of orbits of each of the planets) and the outer solar system doesn't seem to have many opportunities for close interactions.  That being said, all of the outer solar system planets are now in highly elliptical orbits.

So, how many orbits should evolution take?  Jupiter is now in an 11 year orbit and interacts with the inner solar system for about 3 of those years.  Running this out to 60,000 simulated years would be about another 900 orbits.  I'm thinking that I would see some evolution in that time if there was still some major instability.  Saturn is in a 25 year orbit and has a possible interaction with Neptune (currently the 7th planet) every 110 years or so.  That is only about 85 more possible interactions so I'm thinking that I may or may not see evolution there.

Thoughts?  I know that nobody else is really using Universe Sandbox like I am, but I also know there are some very smart people on this board so I'm interested in your thoughts.

[Physics_Hacker]

Generally the more interactions, the higher chance of orbit being changed, or if they come near-ish to each other on a regular basis then each and every interaction will change orbits very slightly, so there may still be some major interactions and changes in 60,000 simulated years, they will just come at an ever slowing rate as things slowly fall into stability again. Though, the chances of major events happening would only go down to negligible amounts after several million simulated years, I suspect, but I'm sure you're not willing to simulate that for that long.

[emarksmi]

Though, the chances of major events happening would only go down to negligible amounts after several million simulated years, I suspect, but I'm sure you're not willing to simulate that for that long.

That was my thought as well.  The system evolution is dictated more by possible interactions than by strict time.

As for how long I'm willing to simulate it, I'd go farther but 55,000 simulated years has taken about 230 real hours.  I simply don't have a fast enough computer to simulate out to millions of years if I keep the time step low enough to ensure some decent accuracy.

[Physics_Hacker]

Though, the chances of major events happening would only go down to negligible amounts after several million simulated years, I suspect, but I'm sure you're not willing to simulate that for that long.

That was my thought as well.  The system evolution is dictated more by possible interactions than by strict time.

As for how long I'm willing to simulate it, I'd go farther but 55,000 simulated years has taken about 230 real hours.  I simply don't have a fast enough computer to simulate out to millions of years if I keep the time step low enough to ensure some decent accuracy.

Exactly. If there are no notable interactions, there's not going to be any notable changes, but interactions just become more unlikely, but as we see in real life, we still get asteroid collisions every once in awhile even after 4 billion years, so after a few billion years there would still be occasional planetary interactions.

Yeah...if I did my math right, at that rate it'd take you about 4,200 hours to simulate 1 million years...not very feasible unless you're ridiculously dedicated.