Quantifying the Effects of Weak Stellar Flybys on the Solar System
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The architecture and evolution of planetary systems are shaped in part by stellar flybys. The strength and frequency of stellar flybys vary over system lifetimes as local stellar environments mature. Within this context, we look at flyby encounters which are too weak to immediately destabilize a planetary system but are nevertheless strong enough to measurably perturb a system’s dynamical state. We estimate the strength of such perturbations on a secularly evolving system using a simple analytic model and confirm those estimates with direct N-body simulations. We then run long-term integrations of our own Solar System and show that even small perturbations from stellar flybys can significantly affect the stability of planetary systems over their lifetime. Due to the coupled nature of the Solar System, we find that small perturbations to Neptune’s orbit cascade inward, increasing the likelihood that the inner Solar System will destabilize. We find that interactions which change the semi-major axis of Neptune by >0.03 AU are significantly more likely to destabilize the Solar System.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.007 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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 source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), 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".