Dimitri Veras, Mark C. Wyatt
The Sun will eventually lose about half of its current mass nonlinearly over
several phases of post-main sequence evolution. This mass loss will cause any
surviving orbiting body to increase its semimajor axis and perhaps vary its
eccentricity. Here, we use a range of Solar models spanning plausible
evolutionary sequences and assume isotropic mass loss to assess the possibility
of escape from the Solar System. We find that the critical semimajor axis in
the Solar System within which an orbiting body is guaranteed to remain bound to
the dying Sun due to perturbations from stellar mass loss alone is
approximately 1,000 AU - 10,000 AU. The fate of objects near or beyond this
critical semimajor axis, such as the Oort Cloud, outer scattered disc and
specific bodies such as Sedna, will significantly depend on their locations
along their orbits when the Sun turns off of the main sequence. These results
are applicable to any exoplanetary system containing a single star with a mass,
metallicity and age which are approximately equal to the Sun's, and suggest
that few extrasolar Oort Clouds could survive post-main sequence evolution
intact.
View original:
http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.2412
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