Giant Planet Instabilities in the Galaxy
- When planetary systems are born, they do not know whether they are stable.
- Global instabilities can move really massive planets around:
- System can last billions of years before the instability happens.
- This is one of the main mechanisms used to explain the orbits of extra-solar planets.
- These instabilities can liberate a small body population that was stable up until that point.
- Icy objects can rain down on terrestrial planets (if the planets survive the instability).
