Wednesday, 27 November 2013

orbit - Are trojans in L5 more likely than in L4?

There is a symmetry in the rotating gravitational field, which means that capture of an asteroid to the L4 is just as likely as to the L5 Lagrange point.



In the case of Mars the split is 1:6, and a simple binomial model suggests a probability of 0.0625 (the probability of a 1:6 or 0:7 split given the hypothesis that they are distributed randomly is 0.0625) This doesn't give a reason to suppose there is anything unusual happening, and as noted in the comments, there is no favouring of L5 when other planets are considered.



As noted by UserLTK: "Earth has an L4 asteroid, none in L5. Uranus also has an L4, no L5 and Neptune has more L4 than L5 objects."



The conclusion is that No, the greater number of L5 martian trojans is just a random effect.

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