OSSOS. XXVII. Population Estimates for Theoretically Stable Centaurs between Uranus and Neptune
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract We calculate the upper bounds of the population of theoretically stable Centaur orbits between Uranus and Neptune. These small bodies are on low-eccentricity, low-inclination orbits in two specific bands of semimajor axis, centered at ∼24.6 and ∼25.6 au. They exhibit unusually long Gyr-stable lifetimes in previously published numerical integrations, orders of magnitude longer than that of a typical Centaur. Despite the increased breadth and depth of recent Solar System surveys, no such objects have been found. Using the Outer Solar System Origins Survey simulator to calculate the detection efficiency for these objects in an ensemble of fully characterized surveys, we determine that a population of 72 stable Centaurs with absolute magnitude H r ≤ 10 (95% confidence upper limit) could remain undetected. The upcoming Legacy Survey of Space and Time will be able to detect this entire intrinsic population, due to its complete coverage of the ecliptic plane. If detected, these objects will be interesting dynamically accessible mission targets—especially as comparison of the stable Centaur orbital phase space to the outcomes of several modern planetary migration simulations suggests that these objects could be close to primordial in nature.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".