Thursday 20 February 2014

Orbital eccentricity variation of the other planets?

On Earth, it's fairly well published, mostly in climate change related articles, that the Earth's orbital eccentricity operates on a 413,000 year cycle with roughly 90,000 - 125,000 year variation within that cycle.



Source



The cause of this variation is primarily the other planets, Jupiter and Saturn usually mentioned as the primary causes (same link).



Question is two fold. How stable is the Earth's orbital eccentricity cycle. 413,000 years sounds enormously precise, but logically, I would think small changes in planetary orbits would create some variability. Is the 413,000 years well established and repeating or is it more uncertain?



and, do we have a good estimate of other planets orbital eccentricity variation? I looked, but couldn't anything at all on other planets eccentricity cycles. The closest I came was this gravity simulation chart below.



90,000 year eccentricity chart of the 4 inner planets here



and method used. Source.

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